ask'- 



<§ y,: 



GLEANINGS FROM THE PAST. 



BEING AN EXPOSITION OF 

BIBLICAL ASTRONOMY, 

AND THE SYMBOLISM AND MYSTERIES ON TYUICH 
WERE FOUNDED ALL 

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND SECRET SOCIETIES. 



ALSO AN EXPLANATION OF THE 

WHICH ABOUND IX THE PAGAX, JEWISH AXD 
CIIRISTIAX BIBLES : 



ALSO, 

Zf/m OIjiclL <^f 'cn_Ae of. ±/le SScj±i L inji6. cutcL 
By G: 0. STEWART, 

NEWARK, X. J. 
#1 



EOSS & TOUCEY, 121 NAS8A\ 

AGENTS FOE THE 



WM. II. WINANS, PEINTEE, NEWARK, N. J. 
1S59. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 
G. C. Stewart, 
In the District Court ot the United States in and for the Eastern 
District of New Jersey. 



EXPLANATION OF VIGNETTE. 



If the reader can imagine himself standing upon the 
cut representing the earth, with the belt of stars, included' 
in the figures of animals, entirely surrounding him, he 
will be able to realize the exact position we occupy among 
the starry host. 

The earth passes entirely around the circle in one year, 
consequently the sun appears to us to pass through all the 
constex-ations during that period. 

These figures in which the reader can observe a profuse 
sprinkling of stars are called by astronomers constella- 
tions. In the whole heavens there are about one hun- 
dred ; forty-eight of which, including the thirteen in our 
diagram, are so ancient that their origin is unknown. 

These constellations are imaginary lines drawn around 
the clusters of stars through or among which the sun 
appears to pass yearly, requiring one month in its passage 
through each constellation, or more properly through 
each sign. The small marks opposite and inside of each 
constellation, are called signs, and the whole circle being 
divided into arcs of 30 degrees each ; the sun is said to be 
in the sign although it may have left the constellation, 
but not yet have entered into the next division of the 
circle. The cut representing the eagle is explained on 
pages 164 and 165. The exact . position the Sun. Moon 
and Earth occupy in our vignette is that described by 
John in Bev. 12th chapter. 1st verse. Virgo as seen from 
the earth appearing to be clothed with the Sun. while the 
1 



ii EXPLANATION OF VIGNETTE. 

Moon is under her feet. In ancient maps and those now 
in use in our schools, Virgo is in a standing or flying 
position, having a huge pair of wings, with corn in one 
hand and fruits and flowers in the other. Her crown of 
twelve stars represent that she is the Hakvest Queen, on 
whose head is showered the fullness of the 12 months of 
the year. 

The signs are placed one month out of their proper 
position because of the precession of the equinoxes, the 
Yernal equinox being now in the sign of Aries, but in the 
constellation Pisces. 

All the lines and figures are imaginary except the Sun, 
Earth, Moon and the Stars. These various lines were 
drawn around the stars for religious and agricultural pur- 
poses, and to define their locality, and not as some affirm, 
because the stars are so located that they resemble the 
constellations in shape. 

A clear conception of the character and meaning of the 
figures and signs of the Zodiac and the technical terms 
applied to them, is highly necessary to the reader if he 
would understand the contents of the book. 

Note.— The following directions will assist those who 
are desirous of tracing out the locale of the constellations 
in the heavens. For further instructions the reader is 
referred to Burritt's Geography and map of the Heavens. 

Pleiades, or the seven stars, are known to all observers. 
These will be nearly or quite overhead in the evenings of 
midwinter. They are in the neck of Taurus. Farther 
east are the Hyades r or the five stars in the face of the 
bull, in the form of the letter Y. Still lower down in a 
direct line east, or toward the horizon, are three stars in 
a direct line in the bands of Orion. Farther down still, in 



EXPLANATION OF VIGXETTE. iii 



the same direction, is Sirius, or the dog star, and following 
in his wake is Noah's Ark ; for, whereas the dog star gave 
notice to the Egyptians of the approach of the flood, the 
ark must needs follow, to rescue the people from the 
inundation. 

The brightest star in Hyades is Aldebaran, and consti- 
tuted the monogram of Ephriam ; Taurus, or the angel of 
spring, being his banner while encamped in the wilderness, 
Orion is a giant warrior, standing with one foot upon 
the river Eridanus, and the other on the hare (land and 
sea) ; one hand is raised toward heaven. This is he, who, 
in the Apocalypse, had one foot upon the sea and the other 
upon the land,, and sware by him that liveth forever, that 
time should be no longer. For further remarks on the 
dog star please consult page 21, and if you would see 
Noah' s Ark in all its beautiful proportions you can consult 
Burritt. 



A REMARKABLE STATEMENT. 

The following item, from the New York Sun, I insert 
here in evidence of the antiquity of Egyptian Astronomy. 

The time to which it points was the period that Joseph 
was captive there, according to our chronology, at which 
time the perfection in astronomy, sculpture and kindred 
arts attained by the Egyptians point to the fact that 
Egypt was even then hoary with age, and in the posses- 
sion of a perfect system of Zodiacal Stellar, or Sun wor- 
ship, that must have required ages to perfect it. and that 
it has left its imprint on every religious system that the 
world has known since that time. The Jews then con- 



EXPLANATION OF VIGNETTE. 



sisted of but one family; their descendants afterwards 
degenerated into barbarism, and Moses was fitted for 
their leader by being " learned in all the wisdom of the 
Egyptians." (Acts. 7., 22.) 

" Professor 0. M. Mitchell delivered, not long since, in 
Philadelphia, one of his splendid astronomical lectures. 
The following statement of a remarkable fact is given in 
a report of the lecture : 

" He had not long since met, in the city of St. Louis, a 
man of great scientific attainments, who, for forty years, 
had been engaged in Egypt in deciphering the hiero- 
glyphics of the ancients. This gentleman had stated to 
him that he had lately unravelled the inscriptions upon the 
coffin of a mummy, now in the London Museum, and that 
in which, by the aid of previous observations, he had dis- 
covered the key to all the astronomical knowledge of the 
Egyptians. The zodiac, with the exact position of the 
planets, was delineated on this coffin, and the date to 
which they pointed was the autumnal equinox in the year 
1722, before Christ, or nearly 3600 years ago. Prof. 
Mitchell employed his assistants to ascertain the exact 
positions of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar 
system on the equinox of that year (1722 B. C), and sent 
him a correct diagram of them, without having communi- 
cated his object in so doing. In compliance with this, the 
calculations were made, and to his astonishment, on com- 
paring the result with the statements of his scientific 
friend, already referred to, it was found that on the 7 th of 
October, 1722 B. C, the moon and planets had occupied 
the exact points in the heavens marked upon the coffin in 
the London Museum." 



INDEX. 



INTRODUCTION". 
Object of the book, page 13 — Universality of star wor- 
ship, 15 — Basis of all religions and secret societies. 16 — 
Similarity of Jewish and heathen worship, 18 — Antiquity 
and supposed origin of Egypt, 19 — Origin of the Priest- 
hood, 22 — Origin of Lent, 25 — Jesus of Nazareth, 26. 

CHAPTER I. 
The religious element in man, p. 28 — Age of thought, 
31 — The Bible, 34 — Destruction of ancient and modern 
literature, 37 — Reasons for running counter to the opinions 
of the age, 39. 

CHAPTER n. 
Introduction of religious forms, 43 — Planet worship, 
45 — Saturn, Jupiter, Brahm, 45 — Dives and Lazarus, 47 — 
Sun travel, 50 — Zodiac, 52 — War in heaven, 53 — Moses 
and the Jews, 54 — Jewish sects, 55 — Canonization of 
Saints, 57 — Symbol language, 58 — Phallum worship, 63 — 
Correspondence, 65. 

CHAPTER in. 
Common origin of all religions, 67 — The talent of the 
world anciently absorbed by astronomy and astrology, 
70 — Origin of unlucky days and seasons, 71 — "War in 
heaven, 72 — Devil born, 73 — Hell discovered, 74 — Bot- 
tomless pit, 74 — Lake of fire, 75 — Devil slain, 77 — The 
Old Serpent, 80 — Origin of plays and secret societies, 84 — 
Oriental style, 85 — Witchcraft, 87. 

CHAPTER TV. 
Amours of the gods, 89 — Trinity of evils, 90 — Constel- 
lations, 96 — Baal worship, 98 — Indian star worship, 99 — 
Ceremonies of Indians and Hebrews identical, 102 — Jonah 
among our western Indians, 102 — Devil in China, 105-^ 
The Cross among the Aztecs, 106. 
5 



V] 



INDEX. 



CHAPTER V. 
Osiris, Isis and Typhon, 10 7 — Pyramids, 111 — System 
of gradual Divinities, 118 — Difference between Moses and 
the Egyptians, 119 — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob always 
pagans, 120. 

CHAPTER YI. 
Circumcision, 125 — Circle, 126— Druids, 126— Celtic 
temples, 127— Hall of Odin, 128— Masonry, 123— Names 
of God, 130— Trinity, 132— Creation, 137. 

CHAPTER VII. 
Origin of Man, 142 — Garden of Eden and the fall, 144 — 
Mysteries in the Bible, 1.5.1 — Oriental style, 152 — Most 
ancient names of God, 156. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Cherubim, 161 — Satan to be restored, 166 — Jacob's 
blessing, 168 — Joseph's coat, 168 — Mistakes in Jewish 
encampment, 1 7 4 — White throne, 177. 

CHAPTER IX. 
David's intrigues, 180— Samson, 182— Baalim. 186— 
Phseton, 187 — Change of the names of the Patriarchs, 
189 — Abraham sacrificing Isaac, 190. 

CHAPTER X. 
Serpent symbol, 191— The two Sauls, 195— The Devil, 
202. 

CHAPTER XI. 
Fallen spirits. 203 — War in heaven, 213 — The Apoca- 
lypse, 215 — The mystical number seven, 215 — The perfect 
number twelve, 218 — Seven churches, 219 — The two 
Covenants, 221 — Theology of the Magi, 224 — The Woman 
clothed with the Sun, 225. 

CHAPTER XIL 
The Sun and Moon stand still, 227 — Elijah translated, 
228— Jonah and the whale, 230— Christmas, 231— Epiph- 
any, 232 — Phallim worship, 232 — Assumption, 234— Na- 
tivity, 234. 



PREFACE. 



' ; He who will not reason is a bigot; lie who dare 
not is a slave; he who cannot is a fool." 

Without making any pretence to literary talent. I have 
in the following pages attempted to gather and arrange 
the fragmentary remains of a world-wide system of worship 
and belief which has been perpetuated under different 
names in the various systems of religion, and continues to 
give laws to the modern christian as well as the pagan 
world. The contents of the work were originally compiled 
and arranged in the form of a series of lectures. While 
thus arranging them I had not the remotest idea that I 
should ever give them to the world in this form. I did 
not feel it to be necessary or proper to state my authori- 
ties in all cases in my lectures, and I find after the time 
that has elapsed that I have forgotten even the titles of 
some of them, or where I obtained them. Most of my 
gleanings were themselves translations or quotations from 
older works. But the reader will observe that my strongest 
proofs and illustrations consist of a comparison of ancient 
astronomy, as known to all learned men. and our Bible. 
Not being very ambitious for the honor of originality, and 
not very conscientious in my propensity to poach on every 
literary field to which I can gain access, and believing also 
in the propriety of using the ideas thus acquired for the 
benefit of humanity, I shall content myself in giving my 
authorities as far as I can remember them. 
7 



Vlll 



PREFACE. 



The writers to whom I am most indebted are the Phi- 
losopher Dupuis, Professor Fellows, 0. G. Squier, Robert 
Taylor, Nott and Gliddon, Higgins' Anacalypsis, O'Brien's 
Pound Towers of Ireland, Mrs. Child's Progress of Reli- 
gious Ideas, Prof. Rhodes, Ovid, Homer, Virgil, and frag- 
ments from older writings, Hebrew Bible, Greek Testa- 
ment, English Bible, Catholic and Protestant creeds, forms 
and ceremonies ; and last, though not least, ancient and 
modern astronomy as perpetuated and taught in the various 
standard works on that subject. Beside these some authors 
on whom I have levied contributions are named in connec- 
tion with the quotations. From the nature of the subject, 
we are necessarily dependent upon various kinds of testi- 
mony, and the results of many years of investigation, in 
various parts of the world and in different ages. I do not 
claim infallibility for my authorities or my own deductions, 
and have purposely omitted many strong proofs and argu- 
ments simply because they are in dispute among the literati 
of the different schools. Among these are the zodiacs of 
Dendera aud Esne, and the arguments based upon the 
supposed antiquity of the sphinxes of Egypt, and their 
astronomical signification. I have delivered the substance 
of this volume in several lectures in some of our principal 
cities, illustrating them with enlarged maps of the heavens, 
and the interest excited in thinking minds, and numerous 
solicitations to publish, have led me to make the experi- 
ment. Although most of the isolated facts are familiar to 
the literary world, yet I have found but a few, even of the 
educated, who were aware of the relation they hold to the 
stupendous whole of human worship. 

The work has been compiled, from first to last, amid 
the cares of a business that has required my almost con- 
stant attention, and has not allowed me a sufficiency of 



PREFACE. 



ix 



time to give it a thorough, revision ; consequently it may 
be deficient in consecutivencss, grammatical accuracy, and 
harmony in the arrangement, together with an apparently 
needless repetition in some cases, that may expose it to the 
shafts of ridicule from the penny-a-liners, or whoever may 
from long habit prefer socxd to sexse. To all such, 
together with critics of every grade, I merely say, " strike, 
but hear me." 

If my views are correct, and my authorities reliable, 
the world ought to be in possession of them, and not leave 
them merely to grace the shelves of an Astor library or 
swell the number of old and rare books of the antiqua- 
rian, and every Mend of truth ought to assist in their 
diffusion. 

The symbolical science of which I treat is an abstruse 
and complicated one. I have therefore confined myself to 
a superficial dissertation on the subject, because its basis 
is so little known and understood by the masses, depend- 
ing as it does upon astronomical rules of interpretation, 
that a more profound expose would be too perplexing and 
not so well convey the necessary information. If there is 
a repetition of some facts, or arguments, my excuse, if one 
is needed, will be found in the necessity I have felt of 
enforcing important ideas by repeating them in their varied 
relations to the main question, or perhaps in my want of 
the judgment and skill necessary to render it more unob- 
jectionable in style. 

In attempting to show that ancient Masonry and exter- 
nal religion were one, I may unintentionally arouse the 
prejudice of some of the catechumens or tyros of the 
lodges, but the adepts or masters of the science will appre- 
ciate my motives, and readily perceive that I am not actu- 
ated by any feelings of hostility to the fraternity, and do 



X 



PREFACE. 



not attempt to expose the secrets of the craft, or arouse 
the prejudice of the community against them. On the 
contrary, I concede to Masons a greater antiquity than 
most of them dare to claim for themselves, and if I do lift 
the veil from some of their mysteries, it is only the veil 
that ignorance has allowed to remain, while the mysteries 
of which I discourse are as much mine and yours, as they 
are his who has clambered the highest on Jacob's ladder 
toward the masonic heaven. I have never read an expose, 
real or pretended, of modern masonry. I know but little 
about the mode of constituting or opening a lodge, 'but 
have purposely kept my mind free from bias, for or against 
it in its modern garb, that I might without prejudice pur- 
sue my investigations in the field that I have chosen for 
my present labors. 

Having, however, resided in this, my native city, nearly 
half a century, I could hardly fail to come in contact with 
the institution in some of its phases, learn something of its 
history and moral bearing, and become the confident in 
some measure of one or more of its leading men. I am 
fully aware that its leaders cannot divulge its secrets, 
properly so called, yet there are so many symbols in use, 
and so much of their machinery that cannot be hidden 
from those who understand its ancestry, that I have 
almost been compelled to witness enough of modern 
Masonry to confirm me. even if I had any doubts, and 
satisfy me that I have the key that unlocks their ancient 
mysteries. "While I had no desire to penetrate into, or at 
least none to expose their modern secrets, I was anxious 
to know at one time whether there remained any of the" 
spirit of the olden time or knowledge of the past among 
them. That desire was gratified in various ways, and to 
my entire satisfaction. 



PREFACE. 



xi 



My conclusions in the matter are that the masses of 
Masons know but little about the science itself, and are 
only to be considered in the light of members of a benev- 
olent society. But on the contrary there are men 
among them who desire to elevate the lodges to, and 
make them transcend their ancient splendor. 

My conclusions in the whole matter are that Ma- 
sonry and ancient Religion once kept house together; 
that Materialism and Superstition quarrelled in the serving 
up of the dishes ; that superstition established a nursery 
for all the weaklings (who could not digest the strong 
meat of the God-spel) decried knowledge, and proclaimed 
that Ignorance was the mother of Devotion. The war 
having thus commenced, Materialism ran to the other 
extreme, rejected all truth that could not be made tangi- 
ble to the merely animal senses, and was well nigh lost 
in the mazes of the blankest Atheism. In this separation 
Materialism took the head and Superstition the. heart, 
and each commenced house-keeping independently of the 
other. 

Materialism represented the male principle, adopted a 
symbol of initiation that forever forbids, from its form and 
nature, the entrance of females into the congregation, and 
became the father of that prolific progeny, that in the form 
of secret societies has overspread the entire Globe. Su- 
perstition exalted the affectional in man above his reason, 
inscribed love upon her banner and drew around her the 
confiding and loving in every age, and she continues to 
this day the loving mother of the Pagan, Jewish, Cath- 
olic and Protestant churches. 

Since their separation these two ante-deluvians have 
kept the world in a constant turmoil with their feuds, and 
unnumbered hecatombs of martyrs have faUen victims to 



xii 



PREFACE. 



their rivalries. Both these hoary sinners must be con- 
verted from the error of their ways; and be re-united. 
Keligion, beneath the influence of increasing light must 
be purged of her superstition and consequent party hate 
while Materialism, or rather scienca born again from the 
chaos of thought, shall be reclaimed from its wanderings, 
and metamorphosed into that leading power in nature that 
symbolizes the fatherhood of God, and leads the van in 
that holy trinity of forces, which in the form of wisdom, 
strength and beauty, shall yet perfect the race, tear down 
the partition walls of sectarianism, abolish caste, and 
inaugurate the era of the universal brotherhood of man. 

I have already exceeded by several pages the amount 
of matter promised in the present work, and I am com- 
pelled to leave unpublished quite a number of pages al- 
ready prepared. I send it forth in the hope of at least 
inciting inquiry. If I succeed in this, and the patronage 
of the work justifies the attempt I shall probably publish 
another volume, or an appendix to this. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The object of this little work is to draw aside 
the veil that bigotry has thrown over the past ; 
to show how and where the false teachings and 
mummeries oft-times called religion had their 
origin; to lead the studious mind by pleasing 
paths to those ancient fields the Fathers wan- 
dered through ; there to pluck the same kind of 
fruit on which they feasted, and scent the fra- 
grant perfumes that were wafted to them from 
amid the ambrosial bowers where science held 
her court; to give the hidden sense to those 
hieroglyphs that eastern sages carved upon their 
temples, obelisks and tombs, and explain the 
meaning of terms and phrases — keys to their 
mysteries, the real sense of which has given 
place to false interpretations and conclusions, all 
of which are based upon those ancient symbols, 
which were so beautiful in their inception, but 
have been perverted by the ignorance of suc- 
ceeding ages. Our object, then, is to read the 
history of the past, as we find it recorded in 
hieroglyphs, engraved upon pyramids, tombs, 
temples, triumphal arches, and statuary ; explain 
it as we have it handed down to us in feasts and 
13 



14 



INTRODUCTION. 



fasts, in forms and ceremonies, names and sym- 
bols, and the various fragments of the arts and 
sciences that have reached our time, notwith- 
standing the mad fury of superstitious zealots. 
All authorities admit that the first, the earliest 
organized religions, of which we have any 
record, were pagan; and that in the pagan 
church were sown the seeds of a better religion. 

A knowledge of these religions has been 
handed down to us in the form of myths, legends, 
riddles and parables; and these, as interpreted 
by most of the moderns, were merely childish 
stories, destitute of either truth or plausibility, 
and giving evidence of a most feeble intellect on 
the part of the authors; but, rescued from the 
misrepresentations of learned ignorance, and 
understood according to their real meaning, they 
rise up before us in beauty and grandeur, and 
exhibit to us a system of worship and belief, 
intricate most certainly, and requiring ages to 
complete it, yet eminently worthy of the giant 
minds and vigorous intellects that during many 
generations were engaged in perfecting it. 
Heathen mythology is a stupendous, or, if you 
please, a childish lie to the uninitiated : but to 
those who are admitted into the secret, they teach 
a lesson that we can hardly afford to remain 
ignorant of, or allow to be lost beneath the obli ■ 



INTRODUCTION. 



15 



vious waves of old time. The earliest Bible 
writers were Egyptians in feeling and religion, 
and until they were snugly settled on lands that 
other hands had cultivated, the tribes were ever 
anxious to return; and even in their own land 
the religion of the Egyptians prevailed over the 
worship of Jehovah. The forms, ceremonies 
and symbols of the Egyptians were transferred 
to Jerusalem, and adopted in gross, in the temple 
worship. 

To understand a large proportion of the Bible 
we must become Egyptianized, or baptized into 
the spirit of their institutions. Their religion 
was purely astronomical and agricultural; and 
their creed, confession of faith, and Bible, were 
written on the skies, and remain there for our 
inspection. The Baal worship of the nations in 
and around Judea was the same system, modified 
to suit the peculiar condition of the people. 
These writings in the skies, the oldest remaining 
on record, were transferred, in allegory or para- 
bles, to the parchment rolls that in early times 
constituted the Jewish Bible. They are the 
lexicons that we must resort to, if we would 
interpret the dead language of ancient science 
in which the Bible was written. They are the 
mystic keys that alone will unlock the secret 
chambers of imagery that abound in that book. 



16 



INTRODUCTION. 



They constitute a vast library, containing the 
text books of the ancient writers, from which 
they gathered the materials of their strange 
stories. Looking up into the blue vault of 
heaven, the uncultivated eye sees nought but a 
confused and promiscuous sprinkling of the 
starry hosts, without system or harmony; but, 
viewed as ancient science arranged them, in 
their various divisions or constellations, they are 
seen to wheel into line, and pursue their daily 
and yearly course with the utmost order and 
regularity. This arrangement of the stars into 
constellations, forms the basis of all religions, as 
it also does the Masonic and many other mysti- 
cal and secret societies that have during so many 
ages excited the curiosity and wonder of the 
world. Even a superficial knowledge of the 
meaning of this arrangement of the starry hosts 
opens up to the scientific and theological student 
a hitherto almost untrodden field for investiga- 
tion — a field rich with the hidden treasures of 
the past, that interested speculators in human 
credulity and ignorance have buried there, and 
who are constantly on the watch to prevent any 
search in that quarter. We have often heard 
how witches, and ghosts, and goblins damned, 
have ever watched over hidden treasures, seek- 
ing to destroy the hapless wight who dared to 



INTRODUCTION. 



17 



disturb their resting place : in like manner, when 
we seek to disentomb these treasures of past 
ages, the vast array of theological demons and 
witches are conjured up to hinder our researches, 
and we are threatened with the fate of the whole 
brood of those who peep and mutter, including 
Balaam and his Ass, and the Witch of Endor, 
backed up by the Almighty's wrath if we do not 
desist. Not that the conservators of the public 
morals object to our investigations if pursued in 
an orthodox manner, and directed to orthodox 
objects. If ^ve inquire about the difference be- 
tween foreknowledge and foreordination, all is 
well; if we discuss the question, whether a 
finite creature can commit an infinite sin, and 
whether, having committed it, he is not justly- 
exposed to the infinite wrath of offended Deity, 
and the effects of that wrath most superlatively 
intensified through the assistance rendered by 
his majesty the Devil, then we are hailed as co- 
workers with God ; and if we are ever calcu- 
lating how much money will save a son], or 
support a missionary, we are considered the salt 
of the earth ; but if we assert our manhood, and 
demand a reason for the requirements of the 
church or society, we are branded as infidels, 
and the thunders of the Vatican are hurled at 
our defenceless heads. 



18 



INTRODUCTION. 



Historians are amazed at the conformity in 
many respects, between the practices of the 
Hebrews and those of nations given over to the 
grossest idolatry. Most of the learned, in order 
to account for such a similitude of usages, say 
that false religions only copied and mimicked 
the true. Other learned men, however, and 
among the rest, Sir J ohn Marsham, in his Rule 
of Times, being very sensible how much un- 
known to, and separated from other nations the 
Hebrews were ; how much disliked by those that 
knew them, and of course how little fit they were 
to serve them as models ; and finding, moreover, 
from a multitude of evident proofs, that the 
sacrifices, the ceremonial, and the very objects 
themselves of idolatry, were prior themselves to 
Moses and the Scriptures, they have maintained 
that the laws and the ceremonies of the Hebrews 
were an imitation of the customs of Egypt and 
the neighboring nations, but adapted to the 
worship of one God. Josephus says in his 
writings, that Abraham taught the Egyptians 
their astronomy; therefore, as their religion was 
based on that science, or rather was identical 
with it, and the Hebrews the same (Josephus 
being the judge), the two religions were the same 
and had a common origin. 

According to Nott and Gliddon (Types of 



INTRODUCTION. 



19 



Mankind) the Egyptian kingdom was in its 
glory 5,500 years ago. This fact is proved by 
their monuments, which are known to be of the 
earliest antiquity, and are covered with figures, 
among which those of the crab and the wild 
goat, of the balance and the scorpion, of the ram 
and the bull, of the lion, the virgin, and the 
other signs of the zodiac are frequently found. 
The religions of the race, according to most 
authors, had their origin in Egypt, along the 
banks of the Nile. This conclusion is drawn 
from the fact that they seem to have been in 
possession of the most perfect system of symbols, 
and the various notions that have obtained a 
lodgement among the sects in regard to God, 
Heaven, Hell, etc., had their origin in the various 
phenomena of nature as manifested there. f 

The earlier history of Egypt is enshrouded 
in doubt, and we have no certain knowledge of 
the earliest process by which she commenced 
her stupendous system of symbol worship that 
has since penetrated the remotest climes and 
given laws and creeds to every sect under 
heaven. We will begin our story, however, in 
traditionary style, in treating of the settlement 
of Egypt, and we shall soon find ourselves with 
a firm footing among the necessities of their 
condition, by which we can easily account for 



20 



INTRODUCTION. 



the habits and customs, and forms and ceremo- 
nies that grew out of these necessities. We 
will suppose then, and early history will bear 
us out in the supposition, that Ham and some 
of his descendants emigrated to and settled on 
the banks of the Nile, and colonized the whole 
of lower Egypt. They first attempted to cul- 
tivate the earth according to the order of the 
year and in the manner of other countries, but 
no sooner were they ready to cut down their 
harvest in the driest season of the year, and 
without the least appearance of rain, than the 
river swelled to their great amazement — it flowed 
on a sudden over its banks, and took from them 
the provision which they thought themselves 
already sure of. The waters continued to rise, 
i sweeping away their cattle and even some of 
the inhabitants themselves. 

The inundation lasted ten or eleven weeks, 
and according to tradition caused them to quit 
lower and retire to upper Egypt. They there 
founded the city of Thebes, originally called 
Ammon-No (Ammon's abode). But many find- 
ing it inconvenient to remove from lower Egypt, 
which, after the retiring of the waters, was 
throughout the remaining part of the year like 
a beautiful garden and a delightful place to 
dwell in, endeavored to fortify themselves against 



I 



INTRODUCTION , 21 

the return of the waters. But they wanted the 
means of knowing exactly the time when it 
would be necessary for them to prepare for the 
inundation. The flowing of the river beyond its 
banks happened some days sooner or later, when 
the sun was under the stars of the Lion. Xear 
the stars of cancer, though pretty far south from 
the band of the zodiac, they saw in the morning 
one of the most brilliant, if not the largest, star 
of the whole heaven, ascending the horizon. 
The Egyptians pitched upon the rising of this 
magnificent star as the infallible sign of the 
sun's passing under the stars of Leo, and the 
beginning of the inundation. That star became 
the public mark on which every one was to keep 
a watchful eye, not to miss the instant of retiring 
to the higher ground. As it was seen but a 
little time above the horizon ere the sun made 
it disappear, it seemed to show itself to the 
Egyptians merely to warn them of the overflow- 
ing which soon followed. They gave this star 
two names. It warned them of danger, where- 
upon they called it Thaaut or Tayaut, the dog; 
they called it also the barker, the monitor, in 
Egyptian Anubis ; in Phoenician Hannobeach, 
the people called it the Xile Star, or barely the 
Nile. 

The same necessity which rendered th 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

Egyptians astronomers made them also painters 
and writers. The inspection of the heavens had 
taught them at last how to regulate their tillage, 
so strangely crossed by that dispensation pecu- 
liar to Egypt. The custom of giving symbolical 
names to the objects that served them as rules, 
most naturally led them to delineate in a rude 
manner the figures of these symbols, in order to 
inform the nation of the work to be done, and of 
the annual events with regard to which it was 
dangerous to be mistaken. This service was 
performed by a number of persons appointed for 
that purpose, and maintained at the public 
expense, whose duty it was to study the revolu- 
tions and aspects of the heavenly bodies, and 
communicate the necessary information to the 
people. 

Such was the origin of the sacerdotal order, 
or priesthood so ancient in Egypt, the chief func- 
tions of which always were the study of the 
heavens and the inspection of the motions of the 
air. Such is the origin of the famous tower, 
where that company was lodged, and where the 
characters of the several works and the symbols 
of the public regulations were carefully deline- 
ated; which symbols appeared in time very 
mysterious, when the meaning of them was 
forgotten. That tower, the structure of which 



INTRODUCTION. 



has caused so much, criticism, was at that time, 
without any affectation of mystery, called the 
Labarynth ; that is the tower, the palace. If we 
would in a reasonable manner unriddle some of 
the more common of the Egyptian symbols, we 
ought to consult the wants of the Egyptian colony. 
It is there that we are naturally to look for the 
meaning of the figures which were exposed to 
the eyes of the whole nation assembled. The 
warning given by the dog-star being their most 
important concern, the Egyptians from its rising 
anciently dated the beginning of their year, and 
the whole series of their feasts. Wherefore, 
instead of representing it under the form of a 
star, which might not be distinguished from 
another, they delineated it under the figure 
relative to its functions and name. They called 
it the star-dog ; the door-keeper ; the star which 
opens and shuts ; closing one year as it were, 
and opening another. When they desired to 
express the renewal of the year, they repre- 
sented it under the form of a door-keeper, easy 
to be distinguished by the attribute of a key. 
Sometimes they gave it two heads, back to back, 
the one of an old man to mark the expiring 
year, and the other a young one to denote the 
new. We have here the origin of the idea made 



INTRODUCTION. 



use of by J esus when he gave to Peter the keys 
of the kingdom. 

Jesus taught in parables, according to the 
custom of all the learned teachers of the olden 
time. The varied figurative expressions that 
apply, or are applied to the kingdom of heaven 
' in the teachings of theologians had their origin 
in the astronomical notions, and in the agricul- 
tural and social condition of the most ancient 
nations. The Egyptians opened their year in 
accordance with the peculiarity of their country; 
but most nations, including the Hebrews, com- 
menced their year at the vernal equinox ; and 
this, with the autumnal equinox, formed the 
two foundations on which rested the royal arch, 
or the months constituting the warm season, 
which to the ancients was the kingdom of 
heaven, the home of the gods, and was really 
the astronomical and agricultural heaven. 

In all religious systems, in order to fullfil all 
righteousness, the founders must needs organize 
them in accordance with the method adopted in 
the earlier ages. Thus, as there were twelve 
domicils of the sun, there must be twelve 
teachers or leaders, and when one was lost 
another must be chosen to supply his place. 
When Levi was selected for the priesthood 
another tribe was divided to maintain the per 



INTRODUCTION. 



25 



feet number; and when Judas fell another was 
chosen to fill his place. All the worship of the 
ancients, when performed systematically, con- 
sisted in imitating; the movements of the 
heavenly bodies and the action of the elements, 
and in celebrating- the labors of the sun, together 
with bloody^ sacrifices to appease a supposed 
angry God. Jesus was, no doubt, well ac- 
quainted with these customs of the ancients and 
conformed to them externally, when he com- 
menced his career; for we find him acknowledg- 
ing them in his baptism and forty clays fast, in 
which he imitated the passage of the sun through 
the constellation Aquarius, where John, Joannes 
or Janus, the baptizer, had his domicil and bap- 
tized the earth with his yearly rains. Having 
been baptized in Jordan he fasted forty days in 
the wilderness, in imitation of the passage of 
the sun from the constellation aquarius, through 
the fishes, to the mutton of March. During the 
forty days when the sun is among the fishes, the 
faithful Catholics, Episcopalians and Mahome- 
tans, abstain from meat and live upon the fishes 
during the season of Lent, as did the Jews and 
Pagans, and as did also Jesus to fullfil all 
righteousness, until the time that he abolished 
the first, or Jewish, to establish the second, or 
Christian, dispensation. A knowledge of the 
2* 



26 



INTRODUCTION. 



- origin and meaning of ancient symbol writing 
will teach us the meaning of most, if not all, of 
the mysterious teachings of the various sacred 
books, on which are based the creeds and forms 
of worship of the various nations of the earth, 
and on which they found their claims to the 
special favoritism of heaven. The labors of 
Jesus of Nazareth consisted mainly of a bold 
attempt to abolish a system of religion founded 
upon the changes of the seasons, and vested in 
external formularies. His teachings had for 
their end and aim the abolition of forms and 
ceremonies, sects and parties, and the introduc- 
tion of a purely spiritual worship and a religion 
of purity, benevolence and love. In this he 
partially succeeded ; but even this partial suc- 
cess was of short duration, for even in the life- 
time of his immediate successors all Asia had 
turned away from the chiefest of the Apostles ; 
the Galatians had run back into Judaism, and 
although there were many thousands of Jews 
who believed, yet they were exceedingly zealous 
in the observance of the Temple service. Paul 
writing to the Corinthians, remarks : " Ye ob- 
serve times and seasons, and days and months 
and years ; I am afraid of you lest I have 
bestowed upon you labor in vain." 

It is self-evident from the New Testament 



INTRODUCTION. 



27 



history that although Jesus disregarded the 
Jewish Sabbath, and the Pagan too, which was 
observed a day later, and although he taught 
his disciples not to pray in public, but in their 
closet with the door shut, and entirely ignored 
all outward observances as obligatory on man; 
yet the church, soon after his death, returned to 
the old forms of religion, and has perpetuated 
them to this day, retaining the same days in her 
ceremonies that the old Pagans and Jews did 
in theirs. Thus the birth-day of Jesus is 
identical with the birth-day of the year; 
Epiphany is observed on the same day that 
they observed it ; water baptism is borrowed 
from them ; Lent is a Pagan fast, which they 
held the same space of time; the Passover is 
still celebrated, and the Assumption and Na- 
tivity of the Virgin occur on the precise day 
that they did in the old Egyptian ritual. 



CHAPTER I. 



Religion, from the earliest traditionary 
period, has been the grand absorbing thought of 
humanity. It has been the ruling idea that has 
ever been leavening and shaping every form of 
social life ; every political organization ; every 
institution of society. It has inspired the poet, 
given tone and coloring to the noblest works of 
art, and dictated to the architects of every age 
the form and order of their creations. 

Any form of government that did not incor- 
porate its dogmas into its statutes, has ever been 
short lived; and every organization that ignored 
the religious element has at best maintained a 
sickly existence, or been destined to speedy 
annihilation. It has left its foot prints upon the 
deserts and far-reaching steppes of the old world, 
and the wide-spread prairies and savannahs of 
the new. It has nestled for a brief period, while 
hiding from the rage of persecutors, in the dens 
and caves of the earth, and has left there those 
touches of beauty, those sublime hieroglyphs, 
which will yet unfold to us more fully its ancient 
teachings, its defects and its beauties, its victo- 
ries and its defeats. It has been the teacher of 
28 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



29 



true art in every age, and its diplomas may yet 
be seen and admired amid the crumbling remains 
of ancient temples, mausoleums, and ruined 
cities. The ancient temples of India, tlie ruins 
of Egypt and Greece, and the desolations of 
Judea, all, all, are monuments of the prodigious 
power of the religious element in man; and 
speak to us in tones of profoundest wisdom. 

That the religious element in man is inherent 
and not acquired, seems to be abundantly proved 
by the fact that this motive power, or sentiment, 
is equally strong under every form of worship, 
and pervades and controls every kindred and 
nation under heaven. The most exalted nations 
and the most degraded; the most intellectual 
and the most ignorant individuals, feel and 
manifest this all pervading impulse; the inten- 
sity and mode of outward manifestation alone 
being modified and controlled by organization* 
education and surrounding conditions. The 
religious feeling that so deeply pervades human- 
ity, has in every age been seeking to incarnate 
itself in new forms of beauty, and has ever been 
seeking to expand itself into a higher life, while 
the manifestation of this life power has ever and 
anon aroused the conservative element in man, 
and produced those scenes of religious diabolism 
that have so often enshrouded the world in 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



mourning. Every sect has had an abundance of 
martyrs; every church has had its bright and 
shining light ; and all forms of worship have had 
their Prophets and Apostles, and have presented 
to the world a bright array of worthies, who by 
their lives and teachings have proved themselves 
and their doctrines worthy of the divine origin 
that they so confidently claim. It is extremely 
doubtful whether any one system of religion 
can claim superiority over the others, except in 
the proportion that its adherents are morally, 
intellectually, and spiritually elevated. 

A degraded sect of believers in Jesus of 
Nazareth may turn the last supper into a drunken 
bacchanal, as did the Corinthians, while a Maho- 
metan or Pagan sect may be noted for their 
incorruptible probity, and for their Godlike 
benevolence. The existence of God, the doc- 
trines of future rewards and punishments and 
the various religious dogmas, that have obtained 
credence in the world, are as firmly believed in 
now as at any former period, although the belief 
in them is manifested in a manner more in accord- 
ance with the spirit of the age in which we live. 
In past ages heresy was rectified in the flames 
by the most enlightened nations ; to-day, perse- 
cutions of that kind are compelled to hide such 
hellish deeds in the darkest dungeons of the 



THE HIEROPHANt. 31 

Inquisitions. But although there is a firmness 
of belief in religion as a whole, vet its devotees 
are becoming more uncertain and yielding in 
their advocacy of the claims of their particular 
sect and peculiar dogmas. This gradual yield- 
ing of contested points, this giving up of partic- 
ular forms of bigotry, necessarily leads to a more 
fraternal spirit, and the result is manifested in 
union-meetings, and an exchange of pulpits be- 
tween sects formerly noted for their hostility. 

This gradual yielding of favorite forms and 
dogmas is probably but a forerunner of a still 
more catholic spirit among the religionists of 
earth. Probably the most self-exalted sects in 
both christian and pagan lands, will yet believe 
and teach that "men of all nations who fear God 
and work righteousness are accepted of him." 

This age is emphatically an age of tlwuglit : 
men are beginning to enquire into the reason and 
propriety of those doctrines and forms which 
perhaps have nothing but antiquity to commend 
them. Ancient systems of theology are under- 
going a process of resuscitation; antiquarians 
are delving among ancient ruins, and examining 
the claims of ancient sacred books. The chris- 
tian world is becoming more tolerant toward the 
pagan brotherhood, and may perchance yet be 
willing to exchange the virtues of our system foi 



32 



THE HIEItOPHANT. 



those inherent in theirs, and reject the objection- 
able features in both. 

Notwithstanding the ameliorated and more 
humanity loving tone of society, the advent of 
any new manifestation of religious thought is 
heralded into existence amid priestly intolerance, 
religious hate, and editorial slang; the pulpit, 
the bar and the press vieing with each other in 
the manifestation of their bigotry and intolerance ; 
not realizing that man is to be carried to the top- 
most eminences of spiritual life, by the succes- 
sive waves of the ever-swelling ocean of thought, 
that break upon the shores of time. Yet the 
warfare against man's newest, holiest convictions, 
is not as bitter as it formerly was, and more 
speedily gives place to the sober second thought. 
The upheavings of religious thought exceeds all 
former manifestations of the kind, and seems to 
point to the present as an auspicious period for 
the calm interchange of opinions on this most 
important subject. 

Although the revolution in the theological 
world is not accompanied with the clashings of 
the warrior's blade and the booming of artillery, 
yet, it is more thorough and far-reaching in its 
influence. Although it may not now, as in for- 
mer times, array nation against nation,, and 
brother against brother in deadly conflict; yet, 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



33 



the questions in dispute are as distinctly enun- 
ciated and the new ideas promulgated are as 
revolutionary in their character and tendency, 
and will be as marked and enduring in their 
results, as have been the mightiest revolutions 
of past ages. The present revolution will prob- 
ably culminate in a lasting or temporary peace, 
just in the proportion that it covers all the points 
of difference, or deals only with a single idea. 

The Spiritualistic movement of the day con- 
tains within itself the elements of revolution and 
change. It boldly grapples with the received 
dogmas of the various sects and rejects all that 
according to its theory have not truth for their 
basis. The facts of Spiritualism are becoming 
so wide spread in their varied manifestations 
that the denial of them is but an evidence of 
intense ignorance of the subject, or of dogged 
dishonesty. The real opponents with whom it 
must grapple fortify themselves by an appeal to 
the Bible. 

"While the Bible itself furnishes most powerful 
arguments in behalf of Spirit intercourse, and 
will yet be most extensively and successfully 
used to advance the cause ; yet, it must be ad- 
mitted by the most sanguine that the common 
mode of interpretation furnishes most powerful 
arguments against the propriety of the further 



34 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



investigation of the phenomena, and condemns 
many of the doctrines advocated by the Spirits 
entirely. The Bible itself has never been 
allowed to stand upon its real merits, but has been 
studied and interpreted in accordance with the 
commentaries of sectarian leaders, and has been 
foisted upon the christian world as altogether 
inspired by God, although the book itself makes 
no such pretensions. It has been also rejected 
by unbelievers on its supposed and not upon its 
real merits. 

The Bible must of necessity play a most im^ 
portant part in the future history of the religious 
world. The infidel may cast it from him, but it 
will return and ask for examination, and a 
decision upon its own merits. The blind devotee 
who has taken it to his heart in gross, as he has 
been taught to believe it, without a resort to his 
judgment, will yet see in it beauties of which he 
never dreamed, and under its influence rise to a 
more just appreciation of man's nature, necessi- 
ties and destiny. 

One object of this volume is to call the atten- 
tion of the student and reformer to a system of 
interpretation of the Bible entirely different from 
any that has obtained credence in the religious 
world. How far I shall be successful in my 
humble efforts time alone can determine. In 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



35 



sending abroad these troths to the world I claim 
nothing for myself as a discoverer, a teacher, or 
an author. These pages are the result of years 
of study in a direction travelled by but a few 
of the students in the theological department; 
consequently, the facilities of research are but 
scanty and more loudly demand that the means 
of greater knowledge should be multiplied and 
become accessible to the masses. Most of the 
works that treat upon this subject are costly 
because of their rarity, inaccessible because they 
are confined to the libraries of the wealthy, or 
are printed only in foreign languages. 

Most of the authorities whom I have consulted, 
among which are included Mrs. Child, and Nott 
and Gliddon, have gathered up the varied and 
wide spread fragments of ancient worship, with- 
out realizing, or else not believing, that the varied 
dogmas and forms of worship of all nations, 
ancient and modern, are but the relics and dis- 
membered parts of a system of worship that has 
ever had its ramifications throughout the world. 

Authors of the various treatises on ancient 
worship have seized upon some isolated frag- 
ment* embodied in some particular creed, and 
attempted to exalt it into the dignity of a system 
of religion, when it was but a solitary portion 
of a stupendous whole. The general mode of 



36 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



treating this question has been as though an 
anatomist had found the bones of an arm, and 
accepted it as the skeleton of a strange animal 
or a serpent, or a skull as the bony structure of 
an animal of the bulbous form. Modern theol- 
ogy has discoursed upon ancient religion as 
would the naturalist on fossil remains, if he 
should treat upon every fragment of bone as the 
complete skeleton of some extinct animal. In 
this small volume I have accepted the facts of 
every writer on all sides of the question, when- 
ever they have stood the test of comparison 
with other historians, corresponded to and were 
corroborated by other facts, or needs must be 
true in the nature of things, just as a missing 
bone is discovered and completes a skeleton, by 
supplying the needed connection, although per- 
haps there is no other evidence in its behalf ; or, 
to use another illustration, I have accepted some 
facts just as we are compelled to accept the 
conclusions that a logician would arrive at after 
we have admitted premises that are founded in 
the nature of things. I assume for my starting 
point, and shall attempt to prove, that all reli- 
gions now extant have grown out of, and are but 
fragments of a most complete and magnificent 
symbol worship, most ancient in its origin, 
dating far back in the annals of time, and many 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



37 



centuries anterior to the invention of letters. 
The art of writing as we term it, or more prop- 
erly the art of alphabetical writing, no doubt 
supplanted symbol or picture writing much 
earlier than is generally conceded by antiqua- 
rians. The Alexandrian library, which was 
destroyed by the Saracens, has been computed 
to contain more reading matter than all the 
literature of the world now extant ; the great 
bulk probably consisting of manuscripts not of 
the symbolical order. The holy books of the 
Hindoos, too, are very ancient, probably alpha- 
betical in their composition. One thing, how- 
ever, is generally conceded, viz : that the old 
Phoenician alphabet, the parent of the Greek, 
Latin, and English, is very ancient. The sym- 
bolical language, however, carries us much 
farther back, and has been perpetuated amid the 
conflagration of cities and the ruins of empires, 
simply because it is more indestructible in its 
nature than are parchment rolls or bound 
volumes. The mad bigots who have inaugu- 
rated new forms of worship in every age, have 
attempted to eradicate all evidence of the older 
worship by destroying their sacred books; but 
the symbolical language, engraved upon their 
monuments and tombs, buried with their dead, 
perpetuated in every form of architecture, inter- 
3 



38 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



woven into every arrangement of society, every 
phase of thought and belief, and written on 
heaven's blue vault, was so far beyond the reach 
of their vandal hands, and so far beyond their 
comprehension, that they passed it by unob- 
served, and it remains to us, a glorious memento 
of ancient industry, science and devotion. 

The modern churches, too, have been busily 
engaged in destroying all the vestiges of our 
connection with the symbolical worship of the 
earlier ages. During the whole Christian era 
this knowledge has been religiously excluded 
from the seats of learning, or if introduced, it 
has been misunderstood and consequently mis- 
represented, or purposely perverted from its 
original meaning. 

In our institutions of learning all the ancient 
mythology antecedent to the Greek and Roman, 
is excluded, or only occasionally introduced in 
some of its most repulsive forms. The reason 
of this is obvious, for whenever any of the 
Pagan doctrines or ceremonies of the Greeks or 
Romans correspond to the Jewish or Christian, 
the force of the coincidence is explained away 
by the supposition that the heathen borrowed 
them from the Jews or Christians. But when 
we are enabled to show that the Jewish and 
Pagan are identical, the older system must carry 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



39 



off the palm of originality. For this purpose 
our researches necessarily lead us to investigate 
the older systems of religious worship. 

The honest inquirer will desire to know our 
object in thus running counter to the settled 
convictions of the age, and at this stage of the 
argument we shall attempt briefly to answer the 
inquiry. We shall lay down as a proposition 
undeniable and furnishing a firm basis of argu- 
ment, that a knowledge of the truth is at all 
times desirable as an abstract affirmation, and 
absolutely necessary for our harmonious develop- 
ment. The exceptions to the rule are the cases 
similar to the treatment of a lunatic, in which 
you are constrained to humor his fancies that 
you may more easily control and benefit him. 
Other reasons, too, most weighty and numerous, 
have influenced us to pursue this investigation. 
The facts that prove the identity of all religions 
are accumulating; the enemies of revealed reli- 
gion are becoming possessed of them, and are 
using them with wonderful efficiency to subvert 
the present order of society without substituting 
a better. The infidel, (I use not the word 
reproachfully, but to designate a class,) and all 
really learned men, know that the various 
systems of religion in the world now, have 
borrowed most if not all of their ideas from the 



40 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



ancient pagans and have perpetuated their forms 
and ceremonies. In view of this, the infidel 
argues that modern religion is false because of 
its origin, but has never yet pioved that ancient 
religion was not true. We accept all the facts 
in the case but deny the conclusions of the 
infidel, because we believe them to be incorrect. 
We may admit, perhaps, that ancient worship, 
as we have been taught to understand it, is and 
was false, our views in regard to it having been 
derived from its opponents. In this age we 
begin to get access to the sacred books of the 
ancient churches; we begin to decipher their 
hieroglyphs and understand the beauties of their 
philosophy. These sacred books, these hiero- 
glyphs, unfold to us the mysteries of their 
worship and furnish a key to unlock the dark 
sayings of our Bible. We do not write this 
book because we love modern worship less, but 
because we love the ancient more, and are im- 
pelled to pull down those walls of separation 
that lead us to despise our fellows because we 
have been taught to believe that they are under 
the curse of the Almighty. We have long 
repudiated the idea that ignorance is the 
mother of devotion, and therefore watch with 
intense interest for any newly discovered truths. 
The Bible is the common battle field of the 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



41 



Christian world; over its mangled remains each 
party alternately triumphs, or mourns its defeat. 
All we conceive from the tact is, that neither 
clan, sect, or party, understands its spirit or its 
meaning. The Bible forms the basis of our 
social and religions institutions ; contains vast 
foods of information, and, rightly understood, 
advocates the best of morals, and is not to be 
treated with the supercilious contempt so com- 
mon to many; but as it also contains much that 
is revolting to decency and good morals, it 
becomes us to inquire how far, or to what extent 
it has the sanction of Deity. 

One object, then, of this little volume is to 
show that as man can only receive truth in 
homoeopathic, and will reject all overdoses, 
therefore God has been necessitated to teach 
him in accordance with his frail condition, and 
in a way that in his wisdom is best adapted to 
that condition. Therefore in olden time he 
spake in parables and dark sayings, and in- 
structed the people, both Jew and Gentile, 
through their teachers, in that symbolical and 
figurative manner that in past ages overspread 
the world. We have almost entirely lost the 
meaning of this symbolical language, in which 
the mysterious parts of the Bible were written, 
and consequently must find the key in these 



42 



THE HIEROPHAKT. 



ancient systems that have come down to us in 
their fragmentary remains. In treating of this 
subject we shall attempt to show that this grand 
system of symbolical religion did universally 
prevail; that the various religions of different 
nations are but fragments of this universal 
whole ; and consequently, that in the same pro- 
portion that we are enabled to comprehend the 
original, we shall have the key that will unlock 
to us the mysteries of the various sects, and 
creeds, and doctrines, and sacred books, that at 
different times have, and do still prevail upon 
the earth. 



CHAPTER II. 



In the beginning, religious forms and cere- 
monies were introduced according to the indi- 
vidual fears or fancies of the worshippers. 
Science had not then organized the routine of 
worship, and each man did that which was good 
in his own sight. As the varied phenomena of 
nature aroused the fears or excited the admira- 
tion of the individual man, he adopted that 
method of appeasing the divine wrath that com- 
mended itself to his better judgment. Thus, in 
process of time, the peculiar methods of appeas- 
ing the wrath of the gods became as numerous 
and diversified as were the families of man. In 
the earlier periods of human existence man was 
unable to comprehend the action of natural law, 
and consequently resolved all the convulsions 
of nature into an exhibition of brute force. The 
volcanic eruptions were but the breathings of the 
fire gods ; the tempest was but a manifestation 
of the wrath of the god of the winds, who was 
thus uttering his vengeance against the people; 
while the thunderbolt was but a signal shot, 
sent at random to remind the people of their 
transgressions and call them to prayers; or, 
43 



44 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



when fatal was a swift messenger sent to do the 
will of the gods, in the destruction of the sinner. 

The thunderbolt, the tornado, the earthquake, 
the volcano, and the ocean's mad lashings, con- 
vinced the devout that the gods resided in the 
skies, the caves of the earth, and in old ocean; 
and their offerings, and the modes of sacrifice, 
were adapted to the locality and supposed 
quality of the various gods to whom these offer- 
ings were made. The fact that the tornado, the 
fire and the flood, swept away their animals and 
crops, led the devout to offer the choicest of these 
to deity to appease his wrath and induce him, 
or them rather, to spare the remainder. 

After men began to congregate, the necessities 
of the state required the appointment of certain 
persons whose sole business it should be to 
regulate the times, seasons, observances and 
laws of the commonwealth. Their first labors 
would naturally be directed to the most pressing 
demands of the people, and after the social 
organism was completed, religion would next 
demand their attention. During the centuries 
preceding the time when men began to build 
cities, the wandering herdsmen had no doubt, 
observed most anxiously the movements of the 
heavenly bodies, and by tradition had preserved 
a knowledge of the names and movements of the 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



45 



principal luminaries, but it required the com- 
bined intelligence and wealth of nations to 
organize a complete system of stellar worship. 
The starry hosts very soon began to be con- 
sidered the residences of the gods, and it became 
the business of the organizers of religion to 
locate them in their appropriate domicils. 
These men, therefore, who were set apart by 
the people became their priests and teachers, 
and their religion most naturally assumed the 
astronomical form. These teachers seem to 
have organized a 'planetary system of worship, 
which was only to be provisional, and that must 
in time give place to a more perfect one, and an 
organization of the heavens into constellations, 
just as nations organize under provisional gov- 
ernments, until they can form and adopt a con- 
stitution. This planetary was a system of 
seven, that being the number of the planets 
known to the ancients, and from this came the 
symbolical or perfect number of seven. This 
system was only a forerunner, a transition, a 
prophecy, a wilderness, a John Baptist, a voice 
to precede and usher in that more perfect system 
of twelves that has been perpetuated in every 
religion under heaven to this day. In the Greek 
mythology the god Saturn had his domicil or 
throne in the planet Saturn, the farthest from 



46 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



the sun then known, whose year required thirty 
of ours, and as he measured time with the 
slowest pace he was called the father of time. 
From the knowledge possessed by the literati 
that this system must give place to another, 
came the prophecy written in the hook of fate 
that of his own offspring one should dethrone 
him and occupy his place. 

From this came the myth that Saturn 
devoured all his male children except Jupiter, 
whom his mother hid until manhood, when he 
warred upon and dethroned his sire. The 
interpretation of the prophecy and myth is found 
in this : Saturn was time ; time destroys all his 
own works, but the sun, one of the works of 
time under the name of Jupiter, the great god, 
becomes the permanent object of worship in the 
place of the planetary system, and Saturn ceases 
to be the king of the gods. Before the system 
of Sun worship was perfected, although divine 
honors were paid to it and the lesser luminaries, 
yet old time (for he was old even then) was 
considered the father of all creation, for all 
things were begotten by him in the prolific 
womb of chaos. The god Brahm of the Hin~ 
doos was time; brahm-a was the first of time, 
the letter a denoting one or first ; in the Hebrew 
theology a-bram (a-brahm) was the first of, or 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



47 



rather the father of time. The parable of 
Dives and Lazarus represented the old and the 
new year; as the old year expired it was car- 
ried into the bosom of time, and between time 
past and time present there was an impassable 
gulf, etc. 

We come now to a consideration of that 
system that became the permanent, organic, 
scientific worship of all ancient nations, and has 
been perpetuated in its most important features 
in the various religions and churches to our time. 
Every nation now on earth ; every religion in 
existence, still perpetuates, in some of its forms 
and doctrines, this most ancient religion. The 
fasts and feasts of the pagans; the rites and 
ceremonies of the Mahometan religion; the 
gorgeous worship of the Eomanist; the more 
simple and puritanic observances and doctrines 
and creeds of the protestant sects, all, all recog- 
nize and perpetuate the various peculiarities of 
ancient sun or symbol worship. If you would 
understand why tall spires are peculiar to 
religious edifices; why gilded balls ornament 
the church steeples; why science and architec- 
tural beauty require the gothic form for sacred 
edifices ; why Sunday is a holy day ; why bread 
and wine are favorite symbols of religion; why 
twelve and seven are perfect numbers; why 



48 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



cherubs (oxen) and seraphs (serpents) are the 
names given to the angelic throng; why the 
cherubim of the Jews had four faces, and God 
was represented by a white throne surmounted 
by four beasts having the identical four faces of 
the cherubim, and a lamb in the midst; in a 
word, if you would understand the mysteries of 
the Old and New Testaments, and of all reli- 
gions, you must master the outlines of the 
system of symbolical religion that was in full 
vigor before the Mosaic era. 

In organizing the astronomical system the 
heavens were mapped out according to the 
apparent motion of the heavenly bodies, and so 
correct were these arrangements that modern 
astronomers have never improved upon them. 
The novice in astronomy is not aware, perhaps, 
that the various groups of stars have been 
located, or mapped out, by drawing around them 
the outline of some animal, reptile, fowl, fish, or 
some instrument, etc., by which astronomers are 
enabled to understand and describe their position 
and movements. The ancients located forty- 
eight of these imaginary forms, called constella- 
tions, and based their religion upon the arrange- 
ment, or, perhaps more properly it may be said 
that this arrangement was the result of their 
religious ideas. It is of but little consequence, 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



49 



however, which had the precedence, or whether 
the two, viz : the astronomical arrangement and 
the religious belief, grew up to completeness 
side by side. This much we do know, that 
they come down to us from the hoary past like 
the Siamese twins, indissolubly united, and art. 
far more ancient than any written book. An- 
cient astronomy carries us back to the age of 
symbolical or picture writing, and furnishes us 
with the key to the mysteries of ancient religion 
and government, and explains many of the 
mistakes made by ancient writers in describing 
the creation, etc. Supposing the earth to be 
flat and stationary, they could not understand 
how rains descended or floods came, except by 
supposing that God had a reservoir of waters 
above the sky or firmament, as it was termed. 
These notions explain the saying, that God 
divided the waters above the firmament from 
the waters beneath the firmament, and opened 
the windows of heaven when he flooded the 
earth. 

We here proceed to describe more minutely 
the stellar arrangement, not as would the 
modern astronomer, except in the bare recital 
of the location of the groups of stars, but in 
their astro-theological meaning and import. I 
shall be somewhat minute here, because a clear 



50 



THE HIEROPHA\T. 



conception of this branch of the argument is 
necessary to a better understanding of the 
whole subject. I shall purposely avoid dealing 
in technicalities, in order to make myself better 
understood by the common reader, for if I reach 
the understanding of the masses, the learned 
cannot fail to comprehend me. 

The sun in his apparent motion pursues a 
course that causes it to cross the equator twice 
in the year, forming an angle of twenty-three 
and a half degrees. These crossings are 
called the vernal and autumnal equinoxes; one 
ushers in the reign of summer, the other the 
dominion of winter; one commenced the reign 
of righteousness, the other the beginning of 
iniquity. Th« two equinoxes formed the base 
of an arch, comprising the two months in 
which the equinoxes occurred, and the five warm 
months. These seven months constituted the 
ancient kingdom of heaven, wherein the sun 
and all the powers of light gathered their 
trophies from the teeming earth ; while the five 
wintry months were the abode of cold, desola- 
tion and death. Here Typhon, the leader up 
of the hosts of hell, held undisputed sway and 
prosecuted his work of destruction, even to the 
seizing of the god of heaven, in or at the 
autumnal equinox, and dragging him down to 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



51 



the bottomless pit of the southern hemisphere. 
The path of the sun, by astronomers called the 
ecliptic, was enclosed by two imaginary parallel 
lines, sixteen degrees distant from each other, 
the sun's path being in the centre. This space, 
called the zodiac, was again divided up into 
twelve arcs of thirty degrees each, making a 
complete circle around the apparent heavens of 
twelve oblong squares of 16x30 degrees. In 
each of these squares was delineated the figure 
of a beast, or some appropriate emblem. These 
figures were, and are, styled constellations. The 
sun enters each square at the commencement 
of each month. In January the sun is in 
Aquarius, or the washer, (Greek, Baptize) 
This constellation is represented by a man 
pouring a river out of an urn, to express the 
idea that the earth is washed yearly by the 
rains of winter. The new-born sun must needs 
pass through this river and be baptized.* This 
constellation is the presiding genius of the 
baptists, although the pedo-baptists derive aid 
and comfort from the fact that the year is 
young, the sun new-horn, and the rains of 
heaven sprinkle as well as pour and immerse. 
In February the sun enters the constellation of 

*Tho ancients taught that the sun was born anew each 
Christmas, the era of the new rear. 



52 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



the Fishes. These are signs of evil import, 
and denote that famine threatens the people. 
The fruits of summer have all been consumed ; 
the herds have administered to man's necessities 
until there are scarcely enough alive to perpet- 
uate their kind, and the inhabitants of the earth 
are driven to the forests for game, or more 
especially to the rivers, which now abound in 
fish. This month was sacred to Dag-On, the 
fish god. In March the sun enters Aries, rep- 
resented by the figure of a Lamb ; in April a 
Bull ; in May the Twins ; in June the Crab ; in 
July the Lion; in August the Virgin; in Sep- 
tember the Scales or Balance; in October the 
Scorpion; in November the Archer; in Decem- 
ber the Goat. Each of these figures represent 
an agricultural, an astronomical, or a theological 
phase of the year. On this arrangement of the 
heavenly bodies is based the external manifes- 
tations of all ancient and modern religions. 
These twelve constellations, according to ancient 
paganism, were the great gods to whom the sun 
gave his power during his abode in each. Ac- 
cording to the Jewish theology, these were the 
twelve houses of the sun. The seven warm 
months were the scenes of his triumph ; the five 
winter months witnessed his humiliation and 
weakness. Let the reader bear in mind that 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



53 



tliis ancient system was symbolical, and that 
the sun represented God, the moon his spouse ; 
correspondentially the earth ; and the planets 
were his angels or his messengers. The con- 
stellations north and south of the zodiac were 
the provinces of his empire, while the milky 
way was the golden street or highway on which 
gods and angels travelled to and from the throne 
of Deity. The war in heaven represented the 
conflict between heat and cold, summer and 
winter. 

The ancients worshipped the genius of fruit- 
fulness, and deprecated the wrath of the powers 
of sterility. They symbolized fertility by the 
egg, the bull, the serpent, and the organs of 
generation. The serpent was at one time in 
the harvest month, but by the precession of the 
equinoxes he fell from his first estate below 
the autumnal, and became the leader up of the 
powers of darkness. This, however, can only 
be understood by the astronomer, but will be 
more fully explained when we treat upon the 
precession of the equinoxes. 

For a more perfect knowledge of this branch 
of the subject the reader will please consult the 
Atlas and Geography of the Heavens in use, 
and as taught in the higher schools of Christen- 
dom. For many ages all, or nearly all, of the 



54 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



literature of the world consisted in the study 
of theology and government, based upon the 
science of astronomy. Prior to the time that 
the Grecian poets flourished, this ancient wor- 
ship was preserved in almost pristine purity in 
the masonic lodges, and schools of the prophets 
among the nations; but transferred to Greece, 
that volatile and gifted nation speedily poetized 
its parables, allegories and symbols, and covered 
up its majestic creations with such a profusion 
of poetic ornaments and drapery, that the great 
horde of theological teachers have to this day 
been gazing upon and admiring these beautiful 
creations of Grecian art, and neglected entirely 
the majestic form within. 

The Bible and the religious forms and doc- 
trines of Christendom came more directly from 
the Egyptian. Moses was thoroughly educated 
in their severer mysteries, and, with some modi- 
fications, introduced them into the holy land. 
After the death of Joshua, and during the 
intestine and other wars that followed, the 
knowledge of this system of religion together 
with a knowledge of the arts, was almost 
entirely lost, and for an indefinite period "every 
man did that which was- good in his own eyes." 
During this " interregnum,'' extending from an 
unknown data until the eighteenth year of the 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



55 



reign of good king J osiah, there evidently was 
no book of the law accessible or known to the 
kings, priests, or people. During the times in 
which Ezra, Ezekiel and Daniel flourished, the 
astronomical worship was again introduced 
among the Jews from Babylon. The visions of 
Ezekiel and Daniel, and other prophets, bear 
the mark of Chaldean worship ; the cherubim and 
the conflicts of the beasts as described in their 
prophecies point unmistakeably to Assyrian 
symbolism. During the various wars in which 
the Jews were engaged, and the consequent 
anarchy that followed, they no doubt came in 
contact with various nations, and sometimes 
borrowed, sometimes gave away, fragments of 
their peculiar religious notions and allegories. 
Of this kind is the story of Jeptha's daughter, 
agreeing as it does in ail its important features, 
even to the name, with the story of Iphigenia, 
of the Greek mythology; the Jews having 
either borrowed from, or lent it to the Greek 
poets. 

In later days the Jews were divided into four 
classes, viz : the Pharisees (Parsees or fire wor- 
shippers), the Sadducees, the Essenes (Es-on-es), 
and the people. The Pharisees adopted the 
Persian fire worship, after the Persian captivity. 

The names Pharisee, Parsee and Persia are 
4 



56 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



derived from pur of the Greeks, the word for 
fire, also the root of purify. Jesus belonged to 
the sect of Essenes, who held to and practised 
the stern morality, and taught in the allegorical 
or parabolical style of the ancient Egyptians. 
His name I-Es-us, compounded of the letter I, 
the Father; es, the lire; and the Latin termina- 
tion us, was Egyptic; the sect to* which he 
belonged bore an Egyptian name, compounded 
of es, the fire; on, the being; and es repeated; 
containing the three or trinity of names denoting 
a divine origin. 

The difference in the doctrines of the two 
sects, Pharisee and Essene, was slight; it was 
simply the difference between two sects of sym- 
bolical worshippers; one, the Pharisees, wor- 
shipping God under the symbol of the perpetual 
fire that was kept burning in the temple; the 
other worshipped Him through the symbol of 
the sun, or according to the most elevated con- 
ceptions of that sect. Jesus himself testified 
that the Pharisees taught good doctrine, and 
told his followers to observe their teachings, but 
not do after their works. This sect of the 
Essenes no doubt had its ramifications through- 
out the enlightened part of the world. By its 
members were taught the most elevated morals, 
and the most disinterested benevolence. There 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



57 



is a most remarkable coincidence between the 
teachings of Confucius, in India and China, and 
the teachings of J esus in Judea, and the life of 
J esus, as written many years after his death by 
his followers, agrees most wonderfully with the 
life of Cirri stna, as handed down to us from an 
earlier period. The reasons of this agreement 
between the two teachers are to be found in the 
method adopted in early ages of deifying their 
heroes, and then writing their history ac cor ding 
to the astro-theological science of that age. 

Dear reader, if you believe in the divinity of 
Jesus do not censure me for writing of him as 
though he were a man. In all things written, 
which I conceive to be truly descriptive of him, 
he appears to me as the most perfect specimen 
of manhood that the world has yet seen. That 
he claimed for himself anything more than that 
he was a teacher sent from God, I do not 
believe ; or, that he claimed any pre-eminence 
of origin or nature over his brethren. All 
higher claims put forth by his followers I 
believe to be the result of a devotional ignorance 
of the same character with that which has lately 
deified Mary, his mother. 

A word here on the subject of the canoniza- 
tion of saints may not be out of place ; and will 
assist the reader in solving many of the prob- 



58 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



lems tliat we may meet with in the examination 
of this subject. History informs ns that in 
olden times whenever a man proved himself a 
successful warrior, was remarkable for his great 
strength, or possessed the powers of healing to 
an eminent degree, he was supposed to be the 
offspring of a god or goddess by a human being, 
and was consequently deified ; therefore in wri- 
ting his history, he had those qualities ascribed 
to him that the ancients supposed God to pos- 
sess. A case illustrative of this is found in the 
Acts of the Apostles, 14 ch. 11 v., where the 
pagans affirmed that the gods had come down 
in the shape of men, and oxen were speedily 
brought out for sacrifice. The Roman church 
has perpetuated this practice, and almost yearly 
discovers that one or more of her deceased 
members were at least half divine. 

Symbol language, or writing with pictures, is 
a tedious but yet the most natural way of com- 
municating ideas. In this way the ancients kept 
their records and perpetuated their religious 
notions. The sun was to them a symbol of 
Deity : the moon was his spouse, and the starry 
hosts represented the lesser gods. The method 
of writing the word sun consisted in drawing a 
circle, or half circle, with rays darting down- 
wards; the earth was represented by rays 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



59 



darting upwards; the moon by a crescent. God 
was also represented by a flame, and a pillar 
erect, from winch symbol came our letter I. 
The serpent was one of the most remarkable 
symbols : with his tail in his mouth, he repre- 
sented eternity, the planetary orbits, the line of 
perfection or beauty; twined around the dial of 
time, he symbolized time enfolded in eternity ; 
gliding rapidly along without the limbs neces- 
sary to other animals, he symbolised the self- 
propelling power of Deity; his tenacity of life 
was the emblem of health, vitality, etc. Thus 
Esculapius, the father of medicine, appears in 
the heavens as the serpent bearer. The num- 
berless scales of the serpent represent the starry 
hosts, and his shrewdness makes him a symbol 
of wisdom ; while his speech, viz : a hiss, is the 
same as the voice of God. Thus Moses lifts 
him up in the wilderness because of his vitality, 
and Jesus appeals to him as an emblem of 
wisdom. The Egyptians adopted the onion as 
an emblem of the universe or the system of 
orbits, of which they seemed to have a clear 
conception. If you take away the outer coating 
you have an onion still ; remove each successive 
layer and still the onion remains ; hence they 
named it On-LOn\ the being, the Almighty, the 
being. To the charge that they worshipped the 



60 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



onion, I reply that they only used it as a symbol 
of the universe or Deity. 

There were three most important symbols 
connected with this whole matter, viz : I. A. 0., 
representing God in his threefold character of 
4 wisdom, strength, and beauty. The letter I, or 
rather an erect pillar, denotes the wisdom that 
stands alone self-existing; the A is the pyramid 
or the mountain denoting strength ; the is the 
serpent with his tail in his mouth, the emblem 
of beauty. On this mode of expressing ideas 
is based the doctrine of correspondence, and I 
presume will furnish the key to that doctrine as 
taught in the Bible. 

lo or lao is the root of all the names of God 
in the various nations of olden time ; these three 
letters formed the grand omnific word, unpro- 
nounceable by the Hebrews, and only commu- 
nicated to the initiated in the ancient secret 
societies. After an alphabet was invented and 
the names of God were spelled by words, the 
grand omnific word was spelled with three 
syllables, viz: Ad-On-Es, or Jah-Bel-On, etc. 
How, when, or where the idea of a trinity 
originated is not clear, but we find among the 
earliest religious ideas the notions that wisdom, 
the father, devised; strength, the son, executed 
or created; and the divine afflatus or breath 



THE HIE ROPHANT. 



61 



beautified. Our alphabet is the first, and prob- 
ably the only one, that is based upon this 
ancient symbolical system. All the letters 
are made up from these two forms, the straight 
line and the circle, or perhaps more properly 
speaking, the perpendicular, the pyramidal, and 
the circle. The A is the pyramid ; the B is the 
perpendicular and two semi-circles ; the C the 
circle, etc. If there be any departures from the 
rule, they are but slight and may be traced to 
modern innovations. Iao is the root of Jo-pater 
or Jupiter, and of Jehovah of the Israelites. 
Sometimes Iao was spelled lac, the c represent- 
ing the serpent partially coiled. lac is the root 
of lacus or Bachus. The word ON, the Egyp- 
tian name of God, includes the circle, the 
pyramid, and the obelisk, or I, as does also the 
word BAAL, the Chaldean name of God. In 
the sun we have the symbolical circle ; in the 
fire (bonfire), we have the pyramid; in the 
radiations from both we have the straight line, 
symbolized by the pillar, obelisk, spire or letter I. 

As soon as the system of sun worship was 
perfected, or perhaps earlier, the Cross became 
a symbol of salvation. This was because the 
sun, in crossing the equator in the vernal 
equinox, brought in salvation from perpetual 
winter, and consequent starvation and cold. 
4* 



62 



THE IIIERGPHANT. 



One of the earliest symbols consisted in a Cross 
with the Lamb at the foot, with the five bleed- 
ing wounds that the five kings, or wintry 
months, had made. This cross was the saltier 
cross on which St. Andrew was crucified, repre- 
sented by the angle of twenty-three and a half 
degrees, formed by the ecliptic and equator. 
The symbol of the Eoman Cross was Egyptic, 
and was to them the symbol of salvation be- 
cause it was erected on the banks of the Nile 
to measure the flood. When the waters reached 
the cross piece they were high enough to flood 
the whole country, and the land was saved from 
famine. In symbolizing the fruitful season, 
which itself became the symbol of heaven, the 
ancients adopted those forms in nature and art 
that expressed most clearly the generating 
forces. These forces became the most effective 
at or about the time of the vernal equinox, and 
there must of necessity be a regeneration of 
nature every spring and a new birth into the 
kingdom of summer. 

Vegetation must be born again and again, 
each year, or eternal death would reign tri- 
umphant throughout the universe. To sym- 
bolize this regeneration and new birth the most 
appropriate emblems were adopted; some of 
them, and particularly those most forcible in 



THE HIEROPHAAT. 63 

their adi^tedness to the subject, are a kind 
most repulsive to the modem ideas of purity 
and modesty. We must say, however, in ex- 
tenuation, that in olden time men did not behold 
or talk about certain of nature's creations with 
the same feelings that possess us in this more 
refined age. All ancient books are in proof of 
this assertion; the Bible itself containing many 
immodest allusions that we must needs suppress 
while reading in an audience of both sexes. 
The principal symbol with which ancient reli- 
gion and science marked the entrance of the 
sun into the kingdom of summer was the 
Phallum of India and Egypt, that has so 
shocked the sensibilities of Christian mis- 
sionaries, although the same emblems are 
perpetuated in a modified form among us to 
this day. This symbol was simply, or rather 
these symbols were the organs of generation, fit 
emblems of fruitfulness, forcible in their teach- 
ings, but too rude for this age, and only retained 
^in the modified form of the Roman Cross, the 
May pole, the Serpent and one or more of the 
Masonic emblems. C. G-. Squier, in his book 
called the Serpent Symbol, is unable to account 
for the fact that this symbol became so universal 
and classes it with the unexplained riddle of the 
sphinx. If he had more thoughtfully consid- 



64 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



ered the agreement in form of the serpent and 
the lingam, he would most probably have reah 
ized that the serpent taught the same doctrine 
under a veil, without becoming as offensive as 
the lingam did in later ages, and thus was per- 
petuated to a later period as an emblem of 
fruitfulness. 

We intend to treat more fully of this and the 
sphinx under another head. Another emblem 
of fruitfulness was the egg, and the bull break- 
ing the egg became a wide spread symbol, of 
the creation. Long hair and beard was an 
emblem of fruitfulness or strength, correspond- 
ing to the sun's rays ; hence the sun in winter 
was represented by a bald headed man, of which 
Elisha was an example. In the wintry con- 
stellations we find the symbols or signs of evil 
import. This part of the heavens were repre- 
sented as a cave, an emblem of the lower 
regions ; hence king David was in a cave in his 
adversity. But in this cave we find the goat, 
because the new born year must have a nurse. 
Here, too, we have the baptizer, flooding the 
earth with the liquid element, and the fishes of 
February, all signs of evil import, and all 
belonging to the ancient bottomless pit. Did 
our limits permit, we might enlarge on this 
subject and give the reader in extenso the true 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



65 



basis of the only correct doctrine of correspond- 
ence, but the limits we have prescribed for 
ourselves forbid the attempt. Swedenborg as- 
serted that the Bible was all written according 
to the science of correspondence, so at least say 
his followers; but all their explanations have 
been either so intangible, unintelligible, superfi- 
cial or abstruse, that I must confess my inability 
to comprehend them. Some of the New Church 
men, I have no doubt, are so peculiarly organ- 
ized that the labyrinthine intricacies and tran- 
scendentalisms of their etherealized systems are 
peculiarly adapted to their mode of thought. 
But the masses require something more human 
and better adapted to their comprehension. 
Thus without attempting to dive into and 
become lost in the intricacies of their subtleties, 
we have attempted to show briefly the origin, 
basis, and practical bearing of the doctrine of 
correspondence as taught in our Bible. Most, 
if not all, of the constellations correspond to the 
month in which they have been placed. The 
lion rampant in July represents the raging heat 
of summer; the water bearer the rains of winter; 
the lamb ushers in the genial spring ; the scales 
of September weigh out the ingatherings of the 
harvest, and balance the seasons when the days 
and nights are equal in length. 



CHAPTER III. 



Years of investigation have but strength- 
ened my belief that all religions worthy of the 
name, including the various pagan sects, have a 
common origin and are a common brotherhood, 
differing only in some external features, and 
can all be traced back, through their various 
forms, ceremonies and symbols, to the remotest 
antiquity, to a common ancestry. By following 
up the streams to a common source, we have 
been enabled to grasp the mystic key that 
unlocks the labyrinth, in which the various 
sects have performed their mysterious ceremo- 
nies, and in which the Hierophants of every 
age have concocted their theological riddles, 
and within the sacred walls of which they have 
hidden themselves from the observation of the 
vulgar throng. 

If we would know the course of any stream 
in all its meanderings, we must follow it to its 
source; if we would study intelligently the 
history of any race or nation, we must know 
their origin or at least their early habits. This 
nation furnishes a striking example, for all 
successful historians of the Republic have been 
66 



THE HIBROPHANT. 



67 



compelled to resort to the archives of the 
mother country for the key to unlock the sense 
of the laws, customs, and usages of society in 
its republican phase. All ecclesiastical writers, 
all theologians contend, that to fully compre- 
hend the Christian dispensation, we must 
become familiar with the Hebrew. How in- 
complete, how destitute of sense would be much 
of the Xew Testament were it not for the light 
thrown upon it by the Old ; and, we may add, 
how imperfect, how almost destitute of meaning, 
is a vast proportion of both, without the light 
thrown upon them by the religious system out 
of which they both grew. 

In affirming that ail religions have a common 
origin, I mean by the term religion, any system 
of belief, or observances, or both, that claims to 
be the worship of God. And I conceive these 
systems to be true or false, just in the proportion 
that they contain the true or false elements of 
real worship. And I believe also that there 
has never yet- existed an entirely true system, 
and that the world has never yet been cursed 
with one entirely false. Man's religion has 
always been an outgrowth of himself; not all 
pure, not entirely debased. I believe, too, that 
all founders of new sects of religionists have 
been inspired, and have been urged forward by 



68 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



an intense desire to benefit the race ; for all 
reorganizes have appeared on the stage of 
action when the older systems had become effete 
or decrepid with age. The earliest organizers 
of religions systems were not certain that God 
conversed in their peculiar dialect, and con- 
cluded that the most rational method of converse 
was in the language of nature, and consequently 
they held intercourse with him through the 
symbolical language, or some visible sign. 

The ancient man could only conceive of God 
as a personal, tangible existence, inhabiting a 
physical form. He knew no force in nature 
except the physical, as he saw it exhibited by 
animals, and more particularly by man, in 
hurling stones, javelins and other missiles. 
When he saw exhibitions of power similar to 
his own, but more frightful, more terrible, he 
straightway charged it to the working of pas- 
sions like his own, and to brute force, perfectly 
overwhelming in its power, but yet residing in 
some organized being, of whom himself was 
but a pigmy counterpart. What other conclu- 
sion could he arrive at? What cause had he 
ever discovered producing physical results, 
except a physical cause % What knowledge 
had he of the operation of nature's laws, or 
physical power, except through the channel and 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



69 



agency of physical organisms ? And in search- 
ing for that power that overwhelmed populous 
cities by volcano or earthquake, depopulated 
them by pestilence, or submerged the fruitful 
valleys by torrent and flood, where would he 
look for the author of these calamities but up- 
ward to heaven's blue vault ? 
In that vast concave, 

" his untutored mind " 
Must " see God in the clouds and hear him in the wind." 

And in scanning that expanse, spread as by 
fairy hands, above and around him, how natu- 
rally would his mind rest upon the sun as the 
abode of, and the symbol of Deity. 

The reason why all religions are the produc- 
tions of a common parent is, because the ancients 
naturally adopted the true symbols, the real 
representatives of God; and while the church 
is in the wilderness of symbols, she must follow 
the cue given her by the inspired pagan leaders, 
who have handed them down to her from the 
mystical past. Allow me to repeat the affirma- 
tion, that the ancients adopted the true and 
natural symbols of God, and the angelic host. 
And I most firmly believe that while we per- 
petuate external forms of worship, we should 
cling to, understand and practice, the ancient 
symbolical system. From the sun came light, 



70 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



heat and fertility; when he hid his face storms 
and tempests held their carnival, and desolation 
marked their pathway. The stars were the 
abodes of the lesser gods, or were supposed to 
be his angels or the abodes of his swift messen- 
gers. The attention of men was thus early 
directed to the skies, and by long observation 
they learned that tempests raged more generally 
when certain stars were in the ascendant, and 
consequently these became the stars or signs of 
evil import. From this small beginning, based 
upon the fears and hopes of man, came that 
stupendous system that has culminated in this 
age, and that has for its base the ignorant 
assumption of ancient man, that there is a per- 
sonal giant, whom we all call God, who is 
tossed to and fro by all the variety of passion 
that marks the most stormy specimen of human 
kind. Most naturally, then, did astronomy and 
astrology become the sciences which for many 
ages absorbed the talent of the world. The 
stars were consulted in all the affairs of church 
and state, and the movements of the heavenly 
bodies were -so clearly defined that in most cases 
the moderns have accepted their discoveries and 
calculations because of their truthfulness. The 
zodiac of the ancients is still preserved as a 
guide in astronomical studes ; is posted in our 



THE HIERGPIIAXT. 



71 



almanacs ; figures largely in the masonic hiero- 
glyphs, and ornaments our most splendid temples 
and churches. 

These writings in the skies, these constella- 
tions of the ancients, constitute the oldest history 
extant, antedating by many ages the oldest 
written work. When the ruins of mausoleums 
and cities fail to lead us farther back ; when we 
have exhausted the tale that sculptured monu- 
ments and symbolical hieroglyphs tell, the 
ancient projections of the spheres, and the 
astronomical systems of the ancients, lead us 
farther on to an age far back in the annals of 
time, where the impenetrable gloom of oblivion 
settles down upon the history of man and forbids 
our farther progress. 

After adopting the belief that the sun, moon 
and stars, or the power residing in them, were 
so many gods, they gradually imbibed the idea 
that the stars exerted a powerful influence for 
good and for evil, although in a lesser degree 
than the sun or moon. They observed the fact 
that when the sun entered certain clusters of the 
stars he began to lose his warmth, and stern 
winter, with his attendant train of storms and 
cold, held almost undisputed sway. They, 
therefore, called these clusters or constellations 
the signs of evil import or bad augury, and 



72 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



from these notions came the celebrated science 
of astrology. Having thus misinterpreted na- 
ture, they must of necessity fall into other 
errors. They soon began to believe that the 
air swarmed with demons, good and bad, and 
that these were continually warring among 
themselves, and interfering with the affairs of 
men, the good seeking his welfare, and the evil 
his destruction. On this idea was based the war 
in heaven that enters so largely into the religious 
system of all nations and sects. Prophets in 
their visions have seen this war in the full tide 
of successful experiment; poets in every age 
have celebrated its fierce conflicts ; and in every 
ecclesiastical system it has formed a staple com- 
modity of trade with the priests, and a well 
stored magazine from which they have drawn 
their arms and ammunition with which they 
have conquered and enslaved the world. 

Two great battles are thus yearly fought on 
the heavenly plains, and so important are they 
to man that the Waterloo skirmish sinks into 
insignificance in the comparison. These two 
conflicts occur at the vernal and autumnal 
equinoxes, and the storms that afflict the earth 
at those periods are but the smoke and dust 
incidental to the battle, or more probably the 
march of their armies shake the heavens until 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



73 



they distill in floods, and the thnnderings and 
blasts of the tornado are but the shock of the 
combatants or the roar of heaven's artillery. 

The autumnal battle always results in the 
victory of Typhon, the hero of the bottomless 
pit; here he seizes the god of the nations, the 
sun, cuts off his locks (for his strength is in his 
hair), binds him with the frosts of winter, until 
with the growth of his locks he reasserts his 
power, and amid the tempest of the vernal 
equinox resumes his throne, and mounts tri- 
umphant in the heavens to be again met and 
conquered in the autumnal equinox. 

According to one theory of olden time, God 
had his throne in the north star. (Probably 
that was his country seat in summer.) The 
stories of the ancients concerning the ascension 
of their gods into heaven and their descent into 
hell, have produced in the minds of the moderns 
the most absurd notions, such as never entered 
into the minds of the first astronomers, who 
divided the heavens into three grand divisions 
in the most simple manner imaginable. They 
observed toward the north that a circuit in the 
heavens always appeared above the horizon; 
this they denominated one great empire ; and as 
there is a point in the middle of it which is 
always stationary, they made it the seat of 
5 



74 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



that empire, and subjected it to the government 
of a monarch, who could from his throne (that 
is the pole), behold all the nations of the earth, 
both by night and by day. This notion, no 
doubt, gave rise to the custom of symbolizing 
Deity by a circle with a dot in the centre. 

They could not but be sensible of that part 
of the vast concave that was forever hid from 
their sight, surrounding the south pole; this 
was distinguished as another grand division, 
and called the pit, in contradistinction from the 
opposite, which was called the mountain. An 
allusion to this idea seems to be made in the 
expression : " Who shall ascend to the hill of the 
Lord." 

From the foregoing ideas among the ancients, 
arose the epithets of Helion and Acheron, which 
meant nearly the same ; as Helion is the sun in 
his highest estate, which the Greeks pronounce 
Heli-os, that is Eli-os, or Elias the most high. 
Acheron is generally translated Hell. It is 
compounded of Achar, the last state or condition, 
and On, the sun. Achar- On, therefore, signifies 
the last state or condition of the sun, alluding 
to his annual disappearance in those constella- 
tions which were in the neighborhood of the 
south pole. 

We see by the precession of the equinoxes, 



THE UTEKOPHANT. 



75 



that while one sign is sinking into the bottomless 
pit, another sign is ascending into heaven, that 
is, rising up towards the pole. And as the inhab- 
itants of the earth are insensible of its motion, 
they thought the pole of heaven revolved around 
that of the earth, describing a figure like a ser- 
pent, some say eight times ; which would seem 
like a ladder, reaching from earth up to the pole, 
that is the throne of Jove. Up this ladder then 
the gods, that is the constellations of the zodiac, 
ascended and descended. 

There is a wide difference in the origin and 
meaning of the terms, "bottomless pit" and 
"lake of fire and brimstone." In Egypt, away 
from the river, and as far as the waters of the 
Xile reach in their annual overflow, the land is 
low and marshy, and the surplus waters are here 
left by the receding river, forming stagnant 
pools and slimy lakes, and thickly covered with 
putrifying vegetation, and all the nauseating 
attendants of stagnant water, aTOwins: still more 
horrid by the rapid increase of creatures of the 
amphibious and finny tribe, — all signs of evil 
import, and incarnations of the imps of hell who 
thus adapt themselves to this new element. The 
bituminous character of the soil and the mephitic 
vapors constantly arising, added to the above, 
seems to have given to lake Sirbonis, at the base 



76 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



of mount Cassius, all the qualities needed to 
make at least a symbolical lake of fire and 
brimstone, if by any stretch of the imagination, 
or otherwise, you can furnish the two latter 
ingredients. To furnish these ingredients we 
have only to resort to the testimony of various 
authorities, including the Greek poets. Accord- 
ing to the poets, Typhon had been slain by the 
thunderbolts of Appollo and had been cast into 
this infernal lake. According to various authors 
whom I have consulted, and according to the 
Egyptian theology, the annual flood of the Nile 
was at first called Python or Typhon, the enemy, 
the scourge; but when by experience they 
learned that the country owed all its fruitfulness 
to this cause, they called the steam or miasma 
that arose from the decaying vegetation and 
mud left by the flood, the enemy, or Typhon; 
from this came the term Typhus, to denote a 
certain kind of fever common at that season. 
The remains of the overflow or scourge settling 
in the putrid lake were called the remains of 
Typhon, slain by Appollo with his thunderbolts 
or lightnings. If the foregoing statement, cor- 
roborated by various writings, be true, we have 
the stygian or stagnant lake ; the green, black 
and yellow scum, with their sulphurous smell 
and the lightning's red glare to complete the 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 77 

picture and give us the symbol and origin of 
the modem horrid idea of a lake of fire and 
brimstone. 

Another historical fact in Egyptian history 
adds to the presumption that this wide spread 
monster idea had its birth in that land of gigantic 
monsters. The burial place of their principal 
city was reached by crossing an arm of this 
stagnant lake. The cemeterv itself was called 
the Elysian fields, but none except the righteous 
dead were allowed to be transported there. Be- 
fore the burial of the dead could take place a 
trial was had upon the bank of the river (Styx), 
and if the crimes of the deceased overbalanced 
his virtues, old Charon, the ferryman, was not 
allowed to receive him into his boat, and the 
body was thrown into the morass amid all the 
vermin that so abounded in that fertile country. 
If the virtues of the dead predominated, he was 
carried amid much rejoicing to his narrow house, 
where he was interred, as some writers say, in 
the form of the Episcopacy,* during which dust 

* Note. — The Egyptian Hierophants or Priests were 
lodged in towers from which they could observe the 
heavens and watch the coming flood and warn the people. 
They were called Epi-scopes, meaning one who oversees. 
From this custom and term came the name or title of 
Episcopacy. 



78 



THE HIEROFHANT. 



is scattered upon the coffin in the grave three 
times, accompanied with the exclamation, " ashes 
to ashes," etc. 

The Egyptians expressed the several increases 
of their swelling river by a column marked with 
1, 2 or 3 lines, in the form of a cross, and sur- 
mounted with a circle, the symbol of God, to 
characterize providence, which governs this most 
important operation. More commonly instead 
of a column they made use of a pole with a cross 
piece at the top. These crosses were termed 
Nileometers, and were placed at proper distances 
along the river banks. When the swelling flood 
at the time of the inundation reached the cross 
piece, a glad and prolonged shout of praise re- 
sounded throughout the land, because the danger 
from famine had passed away. They then were 
directed to open their dykes and flood the land, 
and thus the cross to the Egyptians became the 
symbol of salvation. It may be proper to state 
the fact so extensively known, that in Egypt 
they have no rain and depend entirely on the 
overflow of the Nile for their crops ; some seasons 
the river does not rise high enough to flood the 
fields, and famine ensues. The researches of 
antiquarians and the records of historians render 
it certain that the Mikias or column, marked as 
above stated to signify the progress of the waters, 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



79 



became in Egypt the ordinary sign of deliver- 
ance from evil. They hung the cross on the 
neck of sick persons, and put it in the hand of 
all beneficent deities. 3Ir. Gordon, Secretary 
of the Society for the Encouragement of Learn- 
ing, has given in the seventh plate of his collec- 
tions the amulets and preservatives which he 
has observed in their monuments, many of which 
are like the measure of the Xile. They painted 
the devastation made by the overflowing of the 
Xile under the figure of a dragon, a crocodile, a 
hippopotamus, or a water monster, which they 
called Ob — that is, a swelling, an overflowing; 
and which they afterward called Python, the 
enemy.* Blount Cassius, to the base of which 
the inundation of the Xile extended, derives its 
name from a word which signifies the bound of 
this inundation; and it was because the lake 
Sirbon, or Sirbonis, which is near it, was still 
full of the remains of the inundation when Egypt 
was quite dry, that it was said that Python had 
gone to die in this lake. It was, moreover, so 
full of bitumen and of oily combustible material 
that it was imagined that Jupiter (the sun) had 
pierced him with a thunderbolt, which filled the 

*Xote. — The negroes of the West Indies still retain 
the name of Ob, or Obi, by whose aid they pretend to 
magical powers. 
5* 



80 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



great morass with sulphur. Python, in the 
course of time, became, like the grand omninc 
word (leHoUaH) of the Hebrews, a word too 
sacred or awful for common use, and was only- 
spoken by transposing it into Typhon. Thus, 
from the operation of nature and the play of the 
elements along the banks of the Nile, we have 
the origin of the wide spread notions of that old 
serpent the Devil, and the lake of fire and brim- 
stone into which he was driven by the Almighty. 
"The serpent of the Egyptians, that typified 
evil, seems not to have been the same as that 
borne by Esculapius, in the constellation of that 
name, which was the ordinary serpent, the em- 
blem of life, etc.; but rather the scorpion, the 
constellation of October, sometimes called the 
dragon, and represented by the crocodile or water 
monster, or some peculiarly venomous beast 
rising out of the earth or sea." Most probably 
the scorpion and the dragon have been con- 
founded in the minds of some historians ; they 
were both signs of evil import; the scorpion, 
because in that constellation Typhon overcame 
Osiris (the sun) as he descended into the hell oft 
winter, and the dragon, because he is located 
near the north pole, and is also emblematic of 
winter. This dragon is the great red dragon of 
John the revelator, having seven heads and ten 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



81 



horns, although lie rejoices in but one head in 
the modern celestial maps; but in the ancient 
ones the constellations varied in form somewhat- 
Probably John represented him in the form of 
seven heads because he reaches through seven 
of the twelve grand divisions of the heavens. 

The character of the Egyptian writing de- 
signed to signify God was not a simple flame or 
blaze, as was the custom of the fire worshippers, 
but a circle, or rather a sun. They added to the 
circle or solar globe several marks, or attributes, 
which served to characterize so many perfections. 
To indicate that the Supreme Being is the author 
and preserver of life, they annexed to the circle 
sometimes two points of name, but more com- 
monly one or two serpents. This animal was 
always among the Egyptians, as in other coun- 
tries, the symbol of life and health ; the fiery 
flying serpents, scorpions and dragons being 
probably the only exceptions. Hence it was, 
that when Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
wilderness, the afflicted Hebrews understood it 
to be a sign of health, of preservation, of salva- 
tion. A common ornament in the ancient pagan 
temples, and in the modem gothic churches, to 
be seen in the windows of stained glass, consists 
of a cross entwined by a serpent. From the 
foregoing sketch of the origin of symbols among 



82 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



the Egyptians, and the appointment of a class 
of men to preside over and interpret their mean- 
ing, we have a clue, that carefully followed, will 
lead us still deeper into the religious notions 
and mysteries of the ancients. A system of 
yearly observances having been adopted, and a 
class of men set apart to attend to their cere- 
monies, the interest of this class would naturally 
lead them to add to these forms and ceremonies 
and make them still more intricate and hard to 
be understood ; and having resorted to the skies, 
the home of the gods, how naturally, although 
perhaps almost imperceptibly, would these ob- 
servances assume a religious phase and resolve 
themselves into a regular system of worship, 
and the sacerdotal order gradually be accepted 
as the authorized mediators between God and 
man, to make known to him his duty, and the 
forms of worship most agreeable to Deity. 
Early indeed do we find, in the history of the 
pagan world, that this sect of ecclesiastics, or 
the sacerdotal order, had its various ramifica- 
tions throughout the world. From this small 
beginning, from this company of men appointed 
to watch the rising of the Nile, has arisen a class 
in society that from generation to generation has 
controlled the political and religious destiny 
of the world. From them sprang the various 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



83 



priesthoods and religious systems that have 
obtained a lodgment among mankind. From 
them also came the celebrated organization of 
masonry. These two systems, religion and 
masonry, have a common origin; they boast a 
common parentage. One represents the theo- 
logical, the other the scientific thought of man. 
One is the old school, the other is the new ; and 
as in their origin they were purely scientific, 
masonry can boast the greatest antiquity. The 
key to the mysteries of one, unlocks the secret 
chambers of the other. As these secret organi- 
zations extended to and were adopted by other 
nations, the genius of the people, the difference 
of latitude and longitude, the variations in the 
astronomical and atmospheric phenomena, made 
it necessary to alter, modify, and in some cases 
improve upon the original. In the course of 
time, these differences became more obvious, and 
the reasons for many of the observances were 
forgotten amid the convulsions of empires ; and 
the necessity of the various changes was over- 
looked by the leaders in their zeal to propagate 
their peculiar views; hence fierce contentions 
arose among the leaders, and the common people 
entered heartily into the conflict. The breaches 
were thus widened, and the power by degrees 
passed into the hands of ignorant aspirants, 



84 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



although, perhaps, successful conquerors. We 
have, therefore, handed down to us but the 
fragments of a once powerful, wide spread, and 
most magnificent system of scientific worship. 
Our present external forms of worship consist 
of detached fragments of this ancient system. > 

Thus early in the history of man was organ- 
ized a patrician and a plebian department of 
society; an aristocracy of learning, consisting 
of a secret combination of men, who had their 
passwords and mysteries, hidden from the vulgar 
gaze, and used to perpetuate power and learning 
among themselves ; while the vulgar herd, kept 
in ignorance by their leaders, looked up to them 
with awe and veneration. The exercises in 
these lodges, or schools of the prophets, con- 
sisted in teaching the sciences of astronomy and 
astrology, and performing dramas and tragedies. 
In these secret conclaves originated theatrical 
representations. In their plays they represented 
the movements of the sun, moon, and the planets, 
each actor personating one of the heavenly 
bodies, and imitating by action and speech the 
peculiarity of the particular luminary that be- 
longed to his part. In process of time, plays 
were written and acted in public for the amuse- 
ment of the common people, and also for the 
purpose of more easily governing them. From 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



85 



tliese methods of teaching, adopted to convey 
information and amusement at the same time, 
resulted the peculiar, flowing style of language 
called the oriental, in which the speakers indulge 
freely in parables, allegories, figures, mystical 
allusions, and strange movements, or theatrical 
posturing; all of which gave an air of mystery 
and deep meaning to these exhibitions of the 
forensic art, that the moderns scarcely ever equal. 

True to this style of teaching, Jesus spake in 
parables, and his teachings abounded in figures ; 
and the older prophets lay down in sackcloth, 
or rushed in a nude condition and frenzied man- 
ner through the streets of Jerusalem, in order 
to impress upon a stupid race the near approach 
of some dire calamity. The field of study in 
these colleges was somewhat circumscribed at 
first, but gradually expanded into theology, 
astrology, necromancy, magic, and the kindred 
arts. The peculiar facilities afforded to these 
teachers by the governments and people, enabled 
them to monopolize every department of science, 
and the most stringent laws were enacted to 
protect them in the exercise of tliese powers. 
One faculty developed in man in the earliest 
ages, and guarded with special care, was the 
faculty of second sight, or the power of revealing 
secrets, vulgarly called fortune telling. If a man 



86 



THE HIEROPHAx\T. 



possessed this power, Lis interest and safety 
required him to join these privileged fraternities ; 
consequently they monopolized the department 
of prophecy, or seership ; and he who possessed 
this power, and would not, or perhaps from mal- 
formation, or some other cause, could not join 
the mystic brotherhood, was doomed to speedy 
destruction as a wizard if he dared to exercise 
his peculiar powers. 

Female prophets were not admitted among the 
mystic fraternities, for from the nature of the 
initiatory rite (circumcision) it was impossible to 
administer it to them. There were some female 
seers, however, in all nations, who were so clearly 
and undeniably inspired, that they were recog- 
nized as such and permitted to teach, but they 
were generally treated as witches and were 
persecuted to the death. The pagans employed 
them in their temples as Pythonesses, and as 
keepers of the holy places. Among the He- 
brews, but few females were allowed to prophesy, 
and witches were hardly dealt with, except when 
idolatry was in the ascendant. A great fault in 
most of the ancient systems, was the denial of 
the equality of the sexes, and even the immor- 
tality of woman was scarcely ever admitted; 
even the chosen people of God governed the 
females with most stringent laws, and at the 



THE HI E ROPHANT 



87 



same time denied them the privilege of church 
membership. 

If I have been rather prolix In my introduc- 
tion, it is because I feel the necessity of leading 
the mind of my readers along by easy gradations 
to comprehend the rudiments of the most ab- 
struse science that the ancient world, at least, 
ever knew, and of which but a fey fragments 
have come down to us, thus rendering the study 
of it more difficult. Viewed superficially, it 
seems but a tangled web of absurdities, but care- 
fully studied, it gradually assumes form and 
consistency, and rises up before us in grandeur 
and beauty. After having mastered the external 
arrangements of this colossal myth, that has 
encompassed the world with its huge propor- 
tions, we shall be prepared to understand its 
more subtle teachings, and by degrees obtain a 
clearer insight into the learned past. 

With this key to unlock their mysteries, the 
Bible and other ancient religious books, and the 
histories and poetic effusions of the ancients, 
will be read with increased delight; dark 
passages will be made plain; numerous tales, 
fables, allegories and riddles, which we have 
been taught to consider as childish ditties, will 
reveal to us a depth of meaning most surprising; 
and ancient literature will appear to us as newly 



88 THE HIEROPHANT. 

discovered palaces and monuments, to the enthu- 
siastic antiquarians, awakening us to the delights 
of an entirely new field of investigation. 

In our researches into this subject of ancient 
religion, and among these antique mysteries, we 
must bear in mind that the sun was the grand 
central point, around which all the lesser objects 
of wonder and worship revolve, and to which the 
fathers paid their devotions. The sun was the 
hero of the tale in all their plays and celebra- 
tions, and their dramas represented him in his 
various phases, and celebrated his battles, 
defeats and victories. The sun was emphati- 
cally the God of all ancient nations. He, or it, 
was the father God, while around him, and to a 
certain extent independent of him, his spouse 
the moon, and the inferior gods, performed their 
appropriate offices. 

Ovid, the poet, describes him thus : 

" The god sits high, exalted on a throne 
Of blazing gems, with purple garments on ; 
The hours, in order rang 1 d on either hand, 
And Days, and Months, and Years, and Ages stand. 
Here Spring appears, with flow'ry chaplets bound ; 
Here Summer, in her wheaten garlands crown 1 d ; 
Here Autumn the rich trodden grapes besmear ; 
And hoary Winter shivers in the rear." 



CHAPTER IV. 



The really devotional, in every age, no &ouu\, 
acknowledged and worshipped an all-pervading 
intelligence, whom they called God; and many 
sects arose, that rejected all external symbols 
of Deity; but as we are attempting to show 
whence came our creeds and external forms of 
religion, it is principally within the scope of cur 
argument to deal with the external manifesta- 
tions of the religious thought of olden time. 

The moderns accuse the ancients of worship- 
ping gods who were sensual, because the histo- 
ries of their deities celebrate their amours with 
the daughters of men, as well as with the god- 
desses that peopled the sky, or inhabited the 
earth. In like manner, the infidels taunt the 
christians with the licentiousness of the favorites 
of God among his chosen people; while the 
advocates of the Jewish religion sustain the 
inspiration of the Bible, on the assumption that 
its fairness in recording the sins of God's people 
as well as their virtues, proves its divine origin ; 
forgetting that the same argument will hold good 
in heathen writings, for they too record the vices 
\>i their gods and heroes. An understanding of 
89 



90 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



these ancient mysteries explains to us the real 
nature of these pretended amours, and why both 
the Jewish and pagan writers thus recorded 
them. These various amours of the gods, and 
patriarchs, and prophets, were thus written to 
describe the yearly travels of god (the sun), and 
his conjunction with the hosts of heaven — that 
is, the moon, the planets, and the constellations 
or fixed stars ; while the results of these con- 
junctions were, when stripped of their myste- 
rious covering, merely the varied fruits of 
the teeming earth, the pretended results of these 
conjunctions in the summer signs. The Jews 
in rejecting the polytheism of the Egyptians, 
substituted the names of supposed and real great 
men in the place of the gods and demi-gods of 
the idolaters, and ascribed to them the same 
peculiarities that marked the lives of the pagan 
deities. Thus, in Noah's drunkenness, in Lot's 
incest, Abraham's illicit intercourse, David's 
and Solomon's polygamy and concubinage, we 
have reproduced in mystery the licentiousness 
of the pagan gods. 

The trinity of evils that threaten the destruc- 
tion of man and his works, consist of the cold of 
winter, the heat of summer, and the floods. 
These were personified in Cain. He first, as 
winter (speaking allegorically), destroyed sum- 



THE HIEROPH ANT. 



91 



iner, personified by Ab-el (Ab, father; el, sun); 
in the flood he drowned the world, and with 
intense heat threatens to bum up the earth at 
some future, unknown period. Xoah represented 
Bacchus (the sun) drunk with the vintage that 
his own heat had produced; Isaac and Ishmael, 
Jacob and Esau, were personifications of the 
sun in the two seasons of summer and winter, or 
in the signs of good and evil import ; and David 
and Solomon had imputed to them by their 
biographers, the intercourse of the sun with the 
starry hosts in his yearly passage through the 
constellations. From these ancient mysticisms, 
after their real meaning was in some measure 
lost, originated the system of polygamy that 
has for ages blasted the eastern nations with its 
pestiferous breath. 

The learned sages of antiquity fully under- 
stood the real sense of these allegories; but 
when the Jews became semi-barbarous, as they 
did soon after the death of Joshua, and again 
when they sank into the grossest idolatry under 
the rule of the pagan kings, they lost their real 
meaning, and no doubt supposed that their 
ancestors, even the best of them, had a plurality 
of wives ; but the notion thus propagated, and 
the whole system had its origin in this style of 
celebrating the sun's annual journev. 
6 



92 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



The grand central point then, of oriental 
wors7iip, of ancient literature, of the arts and 
sciences of past ages, was the sun; to him they 
looked as to a mighty friend ; and all those con- 
stellations through which he passed in his 
summer tour were his angels, his followers, his 
friends ; while those wintry signs which seemed 
to be dragging him down to the bottomless pit 
in the southern hemisphere, were signs of evil 
import, were enemies, were the satellites of 
Satan, who had his domicil in Scorpio, at the 
gate of winter. They looked up to the sun as 
their saviour, and with reason too, for when the 
earth was flooded by excessive rains, or inun- 
dated by the swelling river, his beams dried up 
the superabundant moisture; when malignant 
vapors, which so often succeeded the retiring of 
the waters, created a pestilence, he seemed to 
pity the misfortunes of the sufferers, and dis- 
sipated the vapors ; and when rude winter had 
reigned with such rigid sway that the fruits of 
the earth were well nigh exhausted, and even 
the last of the flocks and herds had almost dis- 
appeared to satisfy the demands of hunger; the 
sun, coming forth in majesty from his travels in 
a far off southern clime, puts winter to flight, 
and ushers in the genial spring, with its sunny 
hours, its fruits and flowers ; and summer, too, 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



93 



laden with luxuriant crops ; followed by golden 
autumn, when the harvest having been safely 
garnered, the vintage is gathered, the wine press 
is trodden without the city, 

And the glad nations 
Pour out their libations 
And sing praise to the sun 
When their labors are done, 

And with the flowing wine celebrate the feast 
of Bacchus, the crown feast of the year, among 
all the ancint nations. 

When on his southern tour the sun receded 
farther and farther from the northern climes, 
the people mourned his absence, and fearful lest 
he should forget to return, they celebrated his 
descending phase with appropriate ceremonies, 
and wept over the dangers that beset his path- 
way in his conflict with Typhon, who possibly 
might conquer and drag him downward into the 
bottomless pit and leave the world in darkness; 
for the war in heaven was so noarly balanced, 
and the power of the contending gods so nearly 
equal, that the inhabitants of earth watched 
the conflict with all absorbing interest. When 
however, the sun, victorious over his antagonist, 
began to ascend toward the north, and escaped 
the pit toward which for months he had been 
descending, they celebrated his return with the 



94 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



wildest expressions of delight; with feasting 
and dancing, processions, bonfires and orations, 
and all the parapharnalia of gorgeous eastern 
worship, and with ebullitions of childish glee, 
worthy of the carnival at Rome in its palmiest 
days. As the sun, in his upward career toward 
the summer solstice, arrived at different points 
in the heavens, his journeyings were celebrated 
with an eclat suited to the importance of each 
particular point at which he was supposed to 
pause for a brief period. The most important 
points in the sun's line of march, were the vernal 
and autumnal equinoxes, representing the two 
classifications where the sun gives his blood or 
life for the world ; the vernal representing the 
first, or the covenant of works, in which accord- 
ing to promise, if men plough and sow they 
shall reap ; the autumnal representing the cove- 
nant of grace, when they shout the vintage 
home with great rejoicing. The feast of Bac- 
chus, at the autumnal equinox, was celebrated 
at the same time and in the same manner as was 
the feast of tabernacles among the Jews. The 
fasts and feasts now celebrated in the churches, 
the meaning and intent of which they have lost, 
were thus originally purely astronomical and 
agricultural. This system threw a romance 
around the cultivation of the soil, that assisted 



THE HIEROPHAAT. 



95 



to endear this pursuit to the masses, and deeply 
impressed upon their minds the importance of 
fully developing the resources of mother earth. 
When we moderns more fully understand our 
nature and our best interests, we shall no doubt 
return in some measure to this most rational 
method of relaxation and recreation, and in our 
feasts and celebrations those pursuits will be 
immortalized which are world wide in import- 
ance, and not those which are confined to a 
religious sect or political party. 

The advent of spring, the ushering in of that 
season when the winter is over and gone ; when 
the singing of birds has come, and the voice of 
the turtle is heard in the land; when the sun 
has overcome the frosts of winter, and under the 
influence of his genial rays, vegetation touched 
as by magic wand, everywhere covers the earth 
with a luxuriant carpeting, and gives promise 
of a most bounteous harvest ; and again, when 
in answer to well bestowed labor, the earth 
pours her golden treasure into the lap of indus- 
try, how appropriate for man to rest a brief 
season and celebrate the ingathering of the 
treasures of food that shall save him from want 
and stfirvation. Thus by degrees will men 
come to feel one common interest, and the art 
of agriculture, from whence most of our wealth 



96 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



is derived, will rise in dignity and importance, 
and this noblest of all pursuits be rescued from 
the sacrilegious touch of serfdom, and be exalted 
in human estimation to that divine pursuit, the 
favorite of God, that shall no longer be prosti- 
tuted to merely mercenary purposes ; but man, 
with that enthusiasm that can alone be awakened 
in the religious breast, will commence earnestly 
in a truly gospel spirit, to multiply and replen- 
ish the earth, and with the increased facilities 
that science affords, will cultivate this terrestrial 
Eden; drain its morasses, and reclaim its waste 
places ; will make the wilderness and solitary 
places glad, and the desert bud and blossom as 
the rose. Then, and not until then, will this 
earth be a fit abode for the spirits of the just, 
and the lion and the lamb lie down together. 

In the maps of the heavens now in use in 
high schools throughout Christendom, we have 
represented an outline of the kingdom of 
heaven of the ancients, both Jews and pagans. 
There we have delineated the war in heaven, 
that Milton tells us occurred ere man was 
created The constellations constitute the gods 
and demi-gods of all the ancient pagan nations ; 
the sacred Bull of Egypt ; the Fish-god of India, 
the twelve Baals of Chaldea, Phoenicia, and the 
pagan clans who were ejected by the Jews from 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



97 



the land of promise. In those constellations 
we see the various deities of the fire worship- 
pers, including the Devil; Hercules and his 
compeers of Greek mythology; the Lion of the 
tribe of Judah; the cherubim of Moses, Isaiah, 
Ezekiel and Daniel ; the seraphs or seraphim 
seen by the prophets ; and the four beasts that 
John saw around and in the midst of the great 
white throne. There we see also the twelve 
tribes of Israel; the twelve foundations of the 
Xew Jerusalem; the trees that bare twelve 
manner of fruits; the twelve gates of the city; 
and all the twelves that have for ages been tor- 
tured in a perfect number. There we have also 
exhibited the seven golden candlesticks; the 
eeven stars ; the seven seals ; the seven vials 
j)f wrath, and all the beasts and fallen spirits, 
that made such havoc in heaven and on earth, 
as recorded in the Apocalypse. 

There is also exhibited the whole menagerie 
of wild beasts and fowls, dragons and creeping 
things, that the various religionists have pressed 
into their service, with which to frighten human 
kind, and that have furnished bigots with mate- 
rial with which to hold their followers in 
bondage, from the earliest form of superstition 
down to the Adventists and Mormons of our age. 

If we would understand fully the framework 
6* 



98 THE HIEROPHANT. 

or philosophy of this wide spread system of 
worship, we must consult the remains of Phoe- 
nician, Chaldean, Egyptian and East Indian 
literature. The minutise of ancient sacrificial 
worship is to be found in the Jewish temple 
service. The polytheism of olden time supposed 
twelve great gods the same being, or residing in 
the twelve signs of the zodiac. Those, which in 
our almanacs are called Aries, Taurus, Gemini, 
etc., were by the Baal worshippers called the 
twelve Baals. Here follow their names with 
the meaning in English : 

Baal Tsaddi, God Almighty, 

Baal Aitun, '. the mighty Lord. 

Baal Geh, . . . . • Lord of health. 

Baal Ial (Belial) . Lord of the opposite. 

Baal Zebub, . ■ Lord of the Scorpion. 

Baal Berith, Lord of the Covenant. 

Baal Peor, Lord of the opening 

Baal Perazim, Lord of the divisions 

Baal Zephon, Lord of the North. 

Baal Samen, Lord of Heaven. 

Baal Adoni-Bezek, Lord of Glory. 

Baal Moloch Zedec (Melchisedec), Lord of Bighteousness. 

Bel is the Chaldean name for Baal. The 
Egyptians called the constellations On, that 
being the name of the sun in their language; 
thus Dag- On, Am-On, Gibe- On, etc. The He- 
brews called the constellations Beths (Houses). 
They were the domicils of the sun. Bethlehem 
was the house of bread, or the harvest month ; 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



99 



Beth-any the house of destitution ; Beth-Dag-On 
the house of the fishes, etc. Dag-On is the fish 
god of Egypt and India, from which probably 
came the legend of the mermaid, Dag-On being 
represented under the form of a human being 
and a fish combined. 

The twelve constellations in the band of the 
zodiac, and thirty-six north and south, are more 
ancient than any written record; their origin is 
unknown, and it is uncertain whether the reli- 
gious notions of the ancients grew out of these 
rude delineations in the skies, or gave birth to 
them, although probably they are twin sisters 
and grew up together. 

But this much is certain, that they constitute 
a most important part of all religions, and that 
Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hebrew forms, ceremo- 
nies, and prophecies, and Greek and Eoman 
poetry, have for their end and aim the celebration 
of the movements of the starry hosts; their 
various conflicts, and the final victory of the 
sun and powers of light over the powers of 
cold and darkness. Most of the allegories or 
legends of the Indian tribes of America, are a 
description of the formation and movements of 
the constellations and the relations they bear to 
earth. According to the Algic researches, the 
great northern bear was the progenitor of all 



100 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



the bears that the great Spirit gave to his 
children, the red men. The following account 
of the zodiac, etc., of the Indians of Southern 
Mexico and Central America, was communicated 
to me verbally, and I cannot vouch for its au- 
thenticity, but suppose it to be true in its most 
important particulars. "They are externally 
Eoman Catholics, but still worship the sun in 
secret after the manner of their ancestors. Their 
temples are excavated in the earth, and their 
entrances kept secret from the pale faces, with 
most religious care, and most horrid penalties 
are threatened against him who reveals the 
secret. They have in their dwellings, carefully 
hidden, zodiacs carved on stone, and other em- 
blems of sun worship. If you talk to them 
about the cross of Christ, unless fear seals their 
lips, they will answer you somewhat after this 
manner: 'Talk not to us about the cross of 
Christ ; it has been pricked into our hearts ; it 
has been burned into our flesh; it has been 
scourged into our backs.' And yet the cross 
is a most prominent emblem in their system of 
sun worship. 

" Their zodiac is similar to the Egyptian, but 
differing in some of the constellations. Instead 
of the common ox or bull, they draw the zebu 
or Mexican ox. The puma, or South American 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



101 



jangar occupies the place of Leo. The virgin 
of August, the mother of all living, holds in her 
hand an ear of maize or Indian corn, instead of 
the wheat. The scorpion gives place to the 
lizard ; the archer sits across the shoulders of a 
lama, his legs clasping around the neck, thus 
apparently forming but one animal; the place 
of the goat of December is occupied by a stable, 
wherein a lama is feeding; while the water- 
bearer, or baptizer, is pouring water from a leaf 
of the water plant, instead of the urn to be seen 
in the common planispheres. In the midst of 
the circle formed by the twelve signs, is a cross, 
the ends of the horizontal beam resting on or 
near the two equinoxes ; over the top of the 
cross the crescent or new moon forms an arch, 
resting on its two points on the cross piece; 
while the puma reposes over the top of the 
whole in the sign of July. Thus, while the 
respective followers of the cross and crescent 
have for centuries been engaged in deadly con- 
flict, these harmless and oppressed Aztecs have 
blended them both into one, as did the ancient 
Hebrews and Egyptians, and all real scientific 
worshippers." 

Mrs. Simon, a learned authoress, has labored 
to prove that the Indians of America are the 
ten lost tribes of Israel. She proves that the 



102 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



ceremonials of the Indians and Hebrews are 
identical; that the Indians have among them 
the cross ; that among those most ancient rnins 
of Central America a cross has been found with 
a crucified man sculptured upon it; that the 
Indians circumcise ; have a sacred chest similar 
to the ark of the covenant; and that the frag- 
mentary ceremonies remaining among them are 
so strictly in accordance with the J ewish, that 
they must owe their origin to them. In her 
account of the crucified man she proves entirely 
too much for her hypothesis, for these ruins are 
confessedly older than the christian era, and 
pointing to a period more ancient than the dis- 
persion of Israel. Had the authoress studied 
the ancient religions with the same zeal with 
which she labored to establish her favorite 
theory, she would have discovered that the 
Hebrews and Indians must have derived their 
religions from the same source. 

Schoolcraft, in his Algic researches, says: 
" The accounts which the Indians hand down 
of a remarkable personage of miraculous birth, 
who waged a warfare with monsters, performed 
the most extravagant and heroic feats, under- 
went a catastrophe like J onah's, and survived a 
general deluge, constitute a very prominent por- 
tion of their cabin lore. Interwoven with these 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



103 



leading traits are innumerable tales of personal 
achievements, sagacity, endurance, miracle and 
trick, which place him in almost every scene of 
deep interest that could be imagined, from the 
competitor on the Indian play ground, to a giant 
killer, or a mysterious being, of stern, all-know- 
ing, superhuman power. Whatever man could 
do, he could do ; he affected all the powers of a 
necromancer; he wielded the arts of a demon, 
and had the ubiquity of a God. Scarcely any 
two persons agree in all the minor circumstances 
of the story, and scarcely any omit the leading 
traits." In describing the actions of this great 
personage, these Indians, like the ancient seers 
and teachers, were simply describing the action 
of the sun upon the earth and the conflicts of 
the elements, and thus giving their version of 
the labors of Hercules. 

But in returning to the subject of ancient 
astronomy, the basis of the legends of all nations, 
allow me to repeat the remark that this hook of 
the ancients is the oldest history on record. It 
antedates the most enduring and the oldest of 
earth's monuments. The pyramids of Egypt 
were reared long after these hieroglyphs were 
the text books of the nations. In exploring the 
ruins of Palmyra, Ninevah and Thebes ; in dis- 
entombing the silent inhabitants of the pyramids 



104 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



and other burial places of Egypt and Assyria, 
and translating the records there, they lead us 
hack to a time as early as Adam is supposed to 
have lived ; and we find that then Egypt was 
mistress of the world, and conquered nations, 
enriched her coffers with their tribute ; and the 
constellations constituting as they did, the king- 
dom of heaven of the pagans, loomed upon the 
horizon, and looked down from their starry seats 
upon nations already decrepid with age, and 
tottering to their fall; but even then, these 
nations, in their variety of monumental writings, 
gave no clue to the period when these ancient 
Bibles were put upon record, or what authors 
have thus immortalized their labors, while their 
names have passed into oblivion. 

Modern astronomers have availed themselves 
of these ancient writings in the skies to facilitate 
their researches among the hosts of heaven. 
Forty-eight of the constellations now in use are 
ancient ; the others have been added at different 
periods by the moderns. The conversation of| 
the astrological priests of olden time was always 
in heaven. From some lofty eminence, moun- 
tain, pyramid or tower, they were continually 
making their observations, casting nativities 
and horoscopes, and uttering their prophecies. 
We have an illustration of this in the story of 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



Baalim. The word Baalim is plural and means 
the Baals; and they, that is the zodiacal signs, 
being invoked by Balak, these stars in their 
various signs were consulted according to the 
rules of astrological science, and refused to 
curse Israel; and finally, the system of Baal 
worship was overturned in the battle that fol- 
lowed, only to be incorporated into the Jewish 
system in a modified form, and was perpetuated, 
and handed down to us in fragments, shorn of 
its beauty, and well calculated to bewilder the 
sincere investigator. 

Allow me to say that the times are auspicious, 
and encourage us to explore the mystic regions 
of antiquity. Many learned men are now en- 
gaged in disentombing the relics of ancient 
literature, and deciphering the symbols and 
hieroglyphs, which alone can open up to us a 
knowledge of the olden time, and initiate us into 
their most sacred mysteries. When the Jesuits 
visited China they found there a counterpart of 
their own religion, and could only explain it by 
supposing that the Devil, foreseeing their en- 
trance, had forestalled them by introducing a jac 
simile before their arrival. Had they possessed 
knowledge proportionate to their zeal, they must 
have known that the Chinese and Romanists 
derived their religion from a common source. 



106 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



A late traveller among the Aztec ruins of 
Central America, discovered the symbol of the 
cross, and exposed his ignorance by exclaiming : 
" What missionary of the cross penetrated these 
secluded regions centuries before Columbus dis- 
covered the world]" Missionaries of the cross 
indeed! The ancient Phoenicians were most 
successful missionaries of the cross long before 
the advent of Christianity. The cross was the 
grand emblem of salvation among all pagan 
nations, and the christians in accordance with 
the ancient religious ideas, showed their appre- 
ciation of its peculiar fitness by adopting it as 
their symbol to convey the same idea. The 
crossification of the sun at the vernal equinox 
saved them from the dominion of rude winter; 
and when the river Nile swelled to the top of 
the crosses erected along its banks, the Egyp- 
tians were again saved from threatened famine. 
The Phoenician navigators, trading as they did 
with every nation, introduced this symbol, 
together with the whole system of astronomical 
religion amongst the semi-civilized nations of 
earth. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Egyptians have left on record a remark- 
able fable, which relates in allegorical form the 
myth of Isis (the moon) in search of the body 
of Osiris (the sun), who had been slain by 
Typhon, the god of the infernal regions (winter 
personified). Osiris, when on his return from 
his travels in distant regions, was invited to a 
repast by Typhon, his brother and rival. The 
latter put him to death and threw his body into 
the Nile. The sun, says Plutarch, then occu- 
pied the sign of Scorpio, and the moon was full. 
She was then in the sign opposite Scorpio, that 
is to say in Taurus, which lent its form to the 
sun of the spring equinox. As soon as Isis was 
informed of the death of the unfortunate Osiris, 
whom all the ancients had denominated the same 
god as the sun, when she learned that the genius 
of darkness had shut him up in a coffin, she 
commenced a search after his body, uncertain 
of the route she ought to pursue, uneasy, agitated, 
her breast lacerated with grief. In mourning 
garb, she interrogates every one she meets ; she 
is informed by some young children (twins of 
May) that the coffin which contains the body of 
107 



108 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



her husband, had been carried by the waters out 
to sea and thence to Biblos, where it was 
stopped, and was now reposing upon a plant, 
which had immediately put forth a superb stalk. 
The coffin was so enveloped, as to bear the ap- 
pearance of being but a part of it. The king 
of the country, astonished at the beauty of the 
bush, had it cut, and made of it a column for 
his palace without perceiving the coffin which 
had become incorporated with the trunk. Isis, 
actuated by a divine impulse, arrives at Biblos, 
bathed in tears ; she seats herself near a foun- 
tain, where she remained overwhelmed with 
grief, speaking to no one until the arrival of the 
queen's women. She salutes them politely, and 
commences dressing her hair in such a manner 
as to spread in it, as well as over her whole body, 
the odor of an exquisite perfume. The queen, 
learning from her women what had happened, 
and perceiving the exquisite odor of the ambro- 
sia, desired to know the stranger ; she invites 
her to her palace, attached her to her household, 
and placed her as nurse to her son. The god- 
dess then made herself known, and demanded 
that the precious column should be given to her. 
She drew from it easily the body of her hus- 
band, by disengaging the coffin from the 
branches which covered it ; these she found to 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



109 



be of light texture, which she perfumed with 
essences. She sent to the king and queen this 
envelope of strange boughs, which was deposited 
at Biblos, in the temple of Isis. She then em- 
barked and returned to Egypt, to Orus, her son, 
and deposited the body in a secluded place. 
Typhon having gone to the chase that night, 
finds the coffin, recognizes the corpse, and cuts 
it into fourteen pieces, which he scattered here 
and there. The goddess on discovering this, 
collected these dispersed fragments, and interred 
each part in the place where it was found. 

This is the precise Egyptian legend concern- 
ing Isis, which has not been handed down to us 
without much mutilation, and which makes part 
of a sacred poem upon Osiris, Isis, and Typhon, 
their enemy. I have given the foregoing legend 
to illustrate the method adopted by the ancient 
writers, in their descriptions of the movements 
of the heavenly bodies. These legends, in fact, 
were so many enigmas or riddles. The writers 
exercised their ingenuity to the utmost to give 
truthful or astronomical statements of the move- 
ments of the sun, moon, and the various constel- 
lations in such a manner that it would puzzle 
the brains of their hearers in the solution. Of 
this character was the riddle of Sampson. Many 
of these astronomical enigmas occur in the Bible, 
7 



110 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



and if in the reading of them you cannot readily 
decipher their meaning, yon must remember that 
the writers purposely drew a veil over them ; and 
that even to this day, when Moses, or the Mosaic 
writings, are read in our synagogues, the veil is 
over the faces, or minds of the readers. In ex- 
plaining this story of Isis, I shall he able to 
illustrate in some measure what is meant by the 
hidden meaning of these parables. 

The fourteen pieces of the dismembered body 
of Osiris represent the state and condition, and 
the gradual diminution of the binary light, 
during the fourteen days that follow the full 
moon. The moon at the end of fourteen days 
enters Taurus and becomes united to the sun, 
from which she collects fire upon her disc, 
during the fourteen days which follow. She is 
then found every month in conjunction with him 
in the superior parts of the signs. The equinoc- 
tial year finishes at the moment when the sun x 
and moon are found united with Orion or the 
star Orus, a constellation placed under Taurus, 
which unites itself to the neomenia of spring. 
The moon renews herself in Taurus, and a few 
days after is seen in the form of a crescent, in 
the following sign, that is Gemini, the home of 
Mercury. Then Orion, united to the sun in the 
attitude of a formidable warrior, precipitates 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



Ill 



Scorpio, his rival, into the shades of night; for 
he sets every time Orion appears above the 
horizon. The day becomes lengthened, and the 
germs of evil are by degrees destroyed. It is 
thus that the poet Xonnus pictures to us Typhon 
conquered at the end of winter, when the sun 
arrives in Taurus, and when Orion mounts into 
the heavens with him. 

It is important not to lose sight of the fact, 
that formerly the history of the heavens, and 
particularly of the sun, was written under the 
form of the history of men-, and that the people 
almost universally received it as such, and looked 
upon the hero as a man. The tombs of the gods 
were shown, as if they had really existed ; feasts 
were celebrated, the object of which seemed to 
be to renew every year the grief which had been 
occasioned by their loss. Such was the tomb of 
Osiris, covered under those enormous masses 
known by the name of the pyramids, which the 
Egyptians raised to the star which gives us 
light. One of these has its four sides facing the 
cardinal points of the world. Each of these 
fronts is one hundred and ten fathoms wide at 
the base, and the four form as many equilateral 
triangles. The perpendicular height is seventy- 
seven fathoms, according to the measurement 
given by Chazelles, of the Academy of Sciences. 



112 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



It results from these dimensions, and the latitude 
under which this pyramid is erected, that four- 
teen days before the spring equinox, the precise 
period at which the Persians celebrated the revi- 
val of nature, the sun would cease to cast a shade 
at midday, and would not again cast it until 
fourteen days after the autumnal equinox. Then 
the day, or the sun, would be found in the par- 
allel or circle of southern declension, which 
answers to 5 deg. 15 minutes ; this would happen 
twice a year — once before the spring, and once 
after the fall equinox. The sun would then 
appear exactly at midday upon the summit of 
this pyramid; then his majestic disk would 
appear for some moments, placed upon this im- 
mense pedestal, and seem to rest upon it, while 
his worshippers, on their knees at its base, 
extending their view along the inclined plane 
of the northern front, would contemplate the 
great Osiris — as well when he descended into 
the darkness of the tomb, as when he arose 
triumphant. The same might be said of the 
full moon of the equinoxes when it takes place 
in this parallel. * 
It would seem that the Egyptians, always 
grand in their conceptions, had executed a pro- 
ject (the boldest that was ever imagined) of 
giving a pedestal to the sun and moon, or to 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



113 



Osiris and Isis ; at midday for one, and at mid- 
night for the other, when they arrived in that 
part of the heavens near to which passes the 
line which separates the northern from the 
southern hemisphere ; the empire of good from 
that of evil ; the region of light from that of 
darkness. They wished that the shade should 
disappear from all the fronts of the pyramid at 
midday, during the whole time that the sun 
sojourned in the luminous hemisphere ; and that 
the northern front should be again covered with 
shade when night began to attain her supremacy 
in our hemisphere — that is, at the moment when 
Osiris descended into hell. The tomb of Osiris 
was covered with shade nearly six months, after 
which light surrounded it entirely at midday, as 
soon as he, returning from hell, regained his 
empire in passing into the luminous hemisphere. 
Then he had returned to Isis, and to the god 
of spring, Orus, who had at length conquered 
the genius of darkness and winter. What a 
sublime idea ! 

In the centre of the pyramid is a vault, which 
is said to be the tomb of an ancient king. This 
king is the husband of Isis, whom the people 
believed to have reigned formerly over Egypt; 
while the priests and learned men saw in him 
the powerful planet which governs the world 



114 



THE HIEEOPHANT. 



and enriches it with his benefits. Is it probable 
that they would have gone to so great an expense 
if this tomb had not been reputed to contain the 
precious remains of Osiris, which his wife had 
collected, and which she confided, say they, to 
the priests, to be interred at the same time that 
they decreed him divine honors ? Can we sup- 
pose that there was any other object among a 
people who spared no expense to give all pomp 
and magnificence to their worship, and whose 
greatest luxury was a religious luxury ? It is 
thus that the Babylonians, who worshipped the 
sun under the name of Belus, raised him a tomb 
which was hid by an immense pyramid ; for as 
soon as the powerful planet which animates 
nature became personified, and in the sacred 
allegories was made to be born, to die, and to 
rise again, imitative worship, which sought to 
retrace his adventures, placed tombs beside their 
temples. Thus is shown that of Jupiter, in 
Crete; of Mithra, in Persia; of Hercules, in 
Cadis; of the Coachman; the Celestial Bear; of 
Medusa; of the Pleiades, etc., in Greece. 

The Komanists are celebrated for their gor- 
geous temples, and for the splendor of their 
modes of worship. But what modem temples 
dedicated to the worship of God, compare in 
magnificence and solemn grandeur with the 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



115 



pyramids of old Egypt? "What conception so 
sublime ? What nation so devoted to their God 
as they ? r\0 other nation was ever more truly 
religious ; no other people have left such mag- 
nificent and enduring marks of devotion and 
piety. They have written their creed on 
heaven's blue vault, and their confession of faith 
has been handed down to us in the pyramids, 
and symbols, and in those forms of worship 
that have their various ramifications throughout 
the world. 

But says the bigot : " these men were pagans, 
and consequently under the wrath of God." 
Here we are at issue at once, for we are at- 
tempting to show that the idea so prevalent that 
God is, or ever was angry, is an ancient myth. 
If God was angry with the Egyptian system of 
worship, why did he allow, nay, direct Moses to 
perpetuate the same forms, and most of their 
doctrines among the J ews ] facts that we think 
we shall be able to prove. And why has every 
religious sect been permitted to perpetuate these 
forms and doctrines ] It may be proper here to 
glance at the causes that combined to introduce 
and perpetuate these various forms and ceremo- 
nies of ancient and modern religion ; for inas- 
much as we reject the common idea that God 
has promulgated his laws, viva voce, to any man, 
7* 



116 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



but believe on the contrary that men of all 
nations receive impressions, or a knowledge of 
the Divine will, through their reflective or spir- 
itual powers, it becomes us to show as far as we 
are able, the process by which the nations have 
arrived at their present position in these matters. , 
The unanimous testimony of ancient monuments 
presents us a methodical and complicated sys- 
tem, viz : that of the worship of all the stars, 
adored sometimes in their proper forms, and 
sometimes under figurative emblems and sym- 
bols. This worship was the effect of the knowl- 
edge that men had acquired in physics, and 
was derived immediately from the first causes 
of the social state, that is, from the neces- 
sities and arts of the first degree which are 
among the elements of society. Indeed, as soon 
as men began to unite in society, it became 
necessary for them to multiply the means of 
subsistence, and consequently to attend to agri- 
culture ; and that to be carried on with success 
requires the observation and knowledge of the 
heavens. It was necessary to know the periodi- 
cal return of the same operation of nature, and 
the same phenomena in the skies ; indeed, to go 
so far as to ascertain the duration and succession 
of the seasons and the months of the year. It 
was indispensable in the first place to know the 



THE HIEilOPHAXT. 



117 



course of the sun, who, in his zodiacal revolu- 
tions shows himself the first and supreme agent 
of the whole creation; then of the moon, who 
by her phases and periods, regulates and dis- 
tributes time ; then of the stars, and even planets, 
which by their appearance and disappearance 
on the horizon and nocturnal hemisphere, marked 
the minutest divisions ; finally, it was necessary 
to form a whole system of astronomy, or a cal- 
ender, and from these works there naturally 
followed a new manner of considering these 
predominant and governing powers. Having 
observed that the productions of the earth had a 
regular and constant relation to the heavenly 
bodies ; that the rise, growth, and decline of 
each plant kept pace with the appearance, eleva- 
tion, and declination of the same star, or group 
of stars; in short, that the languor or activity 
of vegetation seemed to depend upon celestial 
influences, men drew from them an idea of action, 
of power in those beings, superior to earthly 
bodies ; and the stars dispensing plenty or 
scarcity, became powers, genii, gods, authors of 
good and evil. As the state of society had 
already introduced a regular hierarchy of ranks, 
employments, and conditions ; men continuing 
to reason by comparison, carried their new 
notions into theology, and formed a complicated 



118 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



system of gradual divinities, in which the sun, 
as first god, was a military chief, a political king ; 
the moon was his wife and queen ; the planets 
were servants, bearers of commands, messen- 
gers ; and the multitudes of stars were a nation, 
an army of heroes, genii whose office was to 
govern the world under the orders of their chiefs ; 
and all the individuals had names, functions, 
attributes drawn from their relations and influ- 
ences, and even sexes, from the gender of their 
appellations. 

If it be asked to what people this system is 
to be attributed, we shall answer that although 
India and Egypt dispute for the palm of anti- 
quity, and India seems to have given the world 
many of the ancient theological notions which 
enter largely into modern creeds, yet we shall 
answer that as far as the merely astronomical 
system is concerned, the same monuments, sup- 
ported by unanimous traditions, attribute it to 
the first tribes of Egypt; and when reason finds 
in that country all the circumstances which 
could lead to such a system ; when it finds there 
a zone of sky bordering on the tropics, equally 
free from the rains of the equator, and the fogs 
of the north ; when it finds there a central point 
of the spheres of the ancients, a salubrious cli- 
mate, a great but manageable river, a sail fertile 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



119 



without labor or art, and placed between two 
seas which communicate with the richest coun- 
tries, — it conceives that the inhabitants of the 
Kile, addicted to agriculture from the nature of 
the soil, to geometry from the annual necessity 
of measuring the lands, to commerce from the 
facility of communication, to astronomy from the 
state of the sky, always open to observation, 
must have been the first to pass from the savage 
to the social state, and consequently to attain 
the physical and moral sciences necessary to 
civilized life. 

A careful comparison of the doctrines and 
ceremonies of the Jews and pagans must satisfy 
every candid mind, that the difference is slight 
indeed, and that Moses perpetuated most of the 
ideas and forms of worship that he must have 
learned in Egypt, being, according to the Bible 
testimony, instructed in all the learning of thai 
country. The main point of difference, and 
that in which Moses proved himself a real re- 
former, was the substitution of the doctrine of 
one God, in the place of a plurality believed in 
by the pagans. The religious notions of all the 
nations, tribes and people, including the ances- 
tors of the Jews, had a common origin, a same- 
ness of belief, and forms so similar, that it was 
impossible for a stiffnecked p^npV debased by 



120 



THE HIEROPHANT 



centuries of abject slavery, to unlearn and throw 
off the entire belief, habits and modes of worship 
that they and their ancestors had most re- 
ligiously adhered to from the earliest ages. If 
it be objected here, that Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob were called out of paganism by God, I 
answer that there is no evidence that I can dis- 
cover in the Bible account of the call of Abraham 
that will sustain the objection. The Lord told 
Abraham to leave his kindred and the land of 
his birth to go into a land that he would show 
him and give to him and his seed after him. 
Nothing is said to justify the idea that God 
thought Abraham's early religion was false, but 
as he journeyed the Lord frequently appeared 
to him, and he built altars and worshipped 
according to the most approved pagan method. 
But the second and third verses of the sixth 
chapter of Exodus must settle the matter at once 
to the satisfaction of honest investigators, viz : 
"And God spake unto Moses, and said unto 
him, I am the Lord ; and I appeared unto Abra- 
ham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by my name 
God Almighty ; but by name Jehovah I was 
not known unto them." If you substitute the 
word Baal Tsaddi for God Almighty in the 
above quotation, you will have the literal read- 
ing of the Hebrew. According to God's state- 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



121 



ment, then, these patriarchs only knew and 
worshipped God as a Chaldean Baal. I know 
it is a common belief that Abraham was a pagan 
until God called him, but not after that time. 
If this were so, how can it be true that Isaac 
and Jacob knew him not as Jehovah ? Did 
Abraham die with the knowledge of the true 
God locked up in his own bosom? Absurd! 
But says the objector, "the name makes no 
difference." If the name makes no difference, 
then the whole question is granted that we are 
attempting to prove, viz : that the sincere wor- 
shipper is accepted, even though he be a wor- 
shipper of Baal or Adonis, or On, or Chemosh; 
all of which names appear in the Bible as the 
names of the true God, as also does the name of 
El (the sun), under the forms of Eloi and Elo- 
him, or Aleim ; the former being the possessive 
case, and the latter the plural number. 

The whole system of Egyptian worship was 
astronomical and far more ancient than any 
written book; yet, Josephus tells us that Abra- 
ham taught the Egyptians their astronomy. If 
this be true, it proves that Abraham was an 
astrological seer, and that he lived many centu- 
ries earlier than the Bible chronology teaches. 
An unprejudiced comparison of the Hebrew and 
pagan systems will satisfy the investigator that 



122 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



the former was but a reform of the latter ; yet a 
reform in one important particular, viz: the 
unity of the Godhead, 

The initiated, or the priesthood, had one be- 
lief for themselves and another for the people. 
They believed in one God, but allowed the 
masses to believe in three or a thousand ; and 
Moses in teaching the unity of God, really ex- 
posed one of the secrets of the craft. But in 
their Varied forms, and fasts and feasts, they 
continued to worship as had their ancestors, and 
were continually falling back into polytheism, 
and persisted in building temples or altars to the 
various gods to whom their ancestors paid divine 
honors. Among the pagan nations, persons pre- 
ferred to honors bore a sceptre or staff of honor, 
and sometimes a plate of gold on the forehead, 
called cadosh, signifying a sacred person. The 
Jews continued the practice. When the tribes 
murmured at seeing the priesthood settled in 
the family of Aaron, the chiefs of the tribes 
received orders to bring their sceptres into the 
tabernacle. The sceptre of Levi, borne by 
Aaron, was fonnd in bloom the next day. The 
plate of gold was also worn by the Chief Priest 
of the Israelites, on the forehead, on which was 
engraven two words, Kodesch lahovah, that is, 
holy to the Lord. The sacred fire, too, of the 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



123 



Jews was but a perpetuation of the sacred and 
perpetual fires of the ancient fire worshippers. 
If a Jew touched a dead body he was defiled; 
the same idea predominated in the pagan world. 
Jamblicus, a pagan writer, gives the following 
reasons for this practice : " It is not lawful to 
touch human dead bodies when the soul has left 
them, since a vestige, image, or representation 
of divine life is extinguished in the body by 
death. But it is no longer unholy to touch other 
dead bodies, because they did not participate of 
a more divine life. To other gods, therefore, 
who are pure from matter, our not touching dead 
bodies is adapted; but to those gods who pre- 
side over animals, and are proximately connected 
1 with them, invocation through animals is pro- 
perly made." 

In "A brief examination of the Rev. M. 
TVarburton's Divine Legation of Moses," are 
the following remarks : " We have no profane 
records that can reach, by many hundred years, 
so high as the ancient state and constitution of 
the religion and priesthood of Egypt, in and 
before the days of Moses. But as the Mosaic 
constitution itself was accommodated to the 
natural temper and bias of a people perfectly 
Egyptianized, and who knew nothing but the 
language, religion, laws and customs of Egypt; 



124 



THE HIEROPHANT, 



and as this people could never be brought off 
from the religion and customs to which they 
had been naturalized, the history of Moses and 
the prophets gives one almost as just and ade- 
quate a notion of the religion, priesthood, and 
worship of Egypt, as if their own history had 
been handed down to us." 

If we admit, as I believe we must, that the 
Jews from the nature of the case, must have 
carried the forms and ceremonies of Egypt into 
Judea, by a careful study of the Bible we may 
learn the minutiae of pagan worship, and by a 
like careful study of ancient astronomy and 
hieroglyphs, we shall be enabled to understand 
the symbols, illustrations, allegories, myths, and 
dark or mysterious passages which so abound in 
our Bible ; and having learned these, we shall 
be enabled, understandingly, to analyze our own 
belief, and thus submit it to the test of reason 
and enlightened common sense. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The claim set up by and for the Jews that 
circumcision was a peculiarity of that nation, 
and ordained or given for the first time to them, 
is a claim entirely untenable. On the contrary, 
there is abundant evidence that it constituted 
one of the most important ceremonies in the 
Egyptian ritual. "When Pythagoras went to 
Egypt, he carried letters of introduction from 
Polycrates, king of Samos, to Amasia, king of 
Egypt, who was a distinguished patron of lite- 
rary men, and thus obtained access to the 
colleges of the priests, or what in Judea would 
be called the schools of the prophets. Having 
found it difficult to gain this privilege, he per- 
formed many severe and troublesome preliminary 
ceremonies, and even submitted to circumcision, 
one of the prescribed conditions of admission. 
In Egypt, circumcision was probably confined to 
the initiated ; Moses extended it to all the males 
of the nation and to all proselytes. De Pauw, 
in his work on the Egyptian and Chinese, ob- 
serves that "Besides the Sabbath, which the 
Egyptians seem to have observed very regularly, 
they had a fixed festival at each new moon; one 
125 



126 THE HIEROPHANT. 

at the summer, and one at the winter solstice, as 
well as at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. 
I need not tell you how sacredly the Jews ob- 
served the Sabbath and the feast of the new 
moon. Circumcision was a tangible method of 
perpetuating the idea of the sacredness of a 
circle. In the ceremony the foreskin of the flesh 
was cut off in a circular form, or a ring, repre- 
senting the serpent with his tail in his mouth, 
and was the diploma or evidence of membership, 
and proof of admission into the lodge, priesthood 
or congregation of the Lord. The tribes con- 
tiguous to Judea placed a yod in the centre of 
a circle, as a symbol of Deity surrounded by 
eternity, of which he was said to be the inscru- 
table author, the ornament and support. The 
Samothracians had a great veneration for the 
circle, which they considered as consecrated by 
the universal presence of the Deity. The 
Chinese use the same symbol. The Hindoos 
believe that God is represented by a perfect 
sphere, without beginning and without end. 

The temples of the British Druids were cir- 
cular, many of them with a single stone in the 
centre (a yod within a circle). Their solemn 
processions were all arranged in the same form ; 
their weapons of war, the circular shield with a 
central boss, the spear with a hollow globe at 



THE HIEUOPHANT. 



127 



its end, etc., all partaking of this general prin- 
ciple ; and without a circle it was thought im- 
possible to obtain the favor of the gods. The 
rites of divination could not be securely and 
successfully performed unless the operator was 
protected within the consecrated periphery of a 
magical circle. The plant vervain was supposed 
to possess the virtue of preventing the effects, of 
fascination, if gathered ritually with an iron 
instrument, at the rising of the dog star, accom- 
panied with the essential ceremony of describing 
a circle on the turf, the circumference of which 
shall be equally distant from the plant before it 
be taken up. Specimens of British temples 
founded on the principle of a point within a 
circle are still in existence to demonstrate the 
truth of the theory. The body of the temple at 
Classerniss, sacred to the sun and the elements, 
will illustrate the principle before us. This 
curious Celtic temple was constructed on geo- 
metrical and astronomical principles, in the form 
of a cross and a circle. The circle consisted of 
twelve upright stones, in allusion to the solar 
year or the twelve signs of the zodiac ; the east, 
west and south are marked by three stones each, 
placed within the circle, in direct lines, pointing 
to each of the quarters ; and towards the north 
is a double row of twice nineteen stones, form- 
8 



128 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



ing two perpendicular parallel lines, with a 
single elevated stone at the entrance. In the 
centre of the circle stands high exalted above 
the rest, the gigantic representative of the Deity. 
This extraordinary symbol was also used by 
the ancient inhabitants of Scandinavia, and had 
an undoubted reference to the hall of Odin, or 
the zodiac, which the Edda informs us contained 
twelve seats disposed in the form of a circle, for 
the principal gods, besides an elevated throne in 
the centre for Odin as the representative of the 
great Father. 

It is remarkable that in all the ancient systems 
of mythology, the great Father, or the male 
generative principle was uniformly symbolized 
by a point within a circle. This emblem was 
placed by the Scandinavian priests and poets, 
on the central summit of a rainbow, which was 
fabled to be a bridge leading from earth to 
heaven ; the emblem therefore represented Vall- 
hall, or the supernal palace of the chief celestial 
Deity. It is said in the Edda that this bridge 
" is all on fire ; for the giants of the mountains 
would climb up to heaven by it if it were easy 
for any one to walk over it." The. palace thus 
elevated was no other than the celestial system, 
illuminated by a central sun, whose representa- 
tive on earth was Thor, a god depicted by 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



129 



Verstegaii with a crowned head, placed in the 
centre of twelve bright stars, expressive of the 
sun's annual course through the zodiacal signs. 
In all regular, well constituted lodges of Masons, 
there is a point within a circle, which is bounded 
between north and south by two parallel lines, 
one representing Moses, the other one king 
Solomon. On the upper part of this circle rests 
the volume of the sacred law, which supports 
Jacob's ladder, the top of which reaches to 
heaveu. In the factitious caves, which priests 
everywhere constructed, they celebrated myste- 
ries which consisted (says Origen against Celsus) 
in imitating the motions of the stars, the planets 
and the heavens. The initiated took the name 
of the constellations, and assumed the figures 
of animals. In the cave of Mithra was a ladder 
of seven steps, representing the seven spheres 
of the planets by means of which so ids ascended 
and descended ; this is precisely the ladder of 
Jacob's vision There is in the royal library a 
superb volume of pictures of the Indian gods, in 
which the ladder is represented with the souls 
of men ascending it. The Jews had a method 
of representing God by a yod in the centre of 
a triangle. The circle represents the male, the 
triangle the female principle. This initial letter 
yod denotes the thought, the idea of God. "It 



130 



THE HIEROPHANT 



is the ray of light" says the enraptured Caba- 
list, " which darts a lustre too transcendent to be 
contemplated by mortal eye; it is a point at 
which thought pauses, and imagination itself 
grows giddy and confounded." " Man," says M. 
Basnage, citing the Rabbins, " may lawfully roll 
his thoughts from one end of heaven to the 
other ; but he cannot approach that inaccessible 
light, that primitive existence contained in the 
letter yod." The chief varieties of this sacred 
name (symbolized by the letter yod), among the 
various nations, were Jah, yah or yac; Bel or 
Baal, and On or Gm. The first of these has 
many fluctuations : Jupiter, Jove, Evohe, etc., 
were but corruptions of Jah or Jehovah. Iao 
or Jao, was pronounced by the oracle of Apollo 
to be the first and greatest of deities. The 
compounds of the second name, Bel, are of great 
variety. The third variation was On; under 
this appellation the Deity was worshipped by 
the Egyptians, and they professed to believe 
that he was eternal, and the fountain of light 
of life ; the sun was adored as his representative 
under the name of Osiris. Oannes or J ohn was 
a god of the Chaldeans, and Dagon of the 
Philistines, both of which are derivations of the 
same name. On was evidently the same deity 
as the Hebrew Jehovah, and was introduced 



THE HIEROPHA\T. 



131 



among the Greeks by Plato, who acknowledges 
his eternity and incomprehensibility in those 
remarkable words: "Tell me of the God On; 
which Is, and never knew beginning." And 
the same name was used by the early christians 
for the true God; for St. John in the Apoca- 
lypse (chap. 1, v. 4) makes use of the following- 
sentence : "On, kai o'en, kai o'erchomenos 
in our version rendered " Him, which is, and 
which was, and which is to come ;" the word on 
being translated Mm. The same word, with a 
slight variation, was one of the names of the 
supreme deity in India ; and. a devout medita- 
tion on it was considered capable of conveying 
the highest degree of perfection. In the ordi- 
nances of Menu, we are informed how this 
sacred name was produced: "Brahma milked 
out as it were, from the three vedas, the letter 
A, the letter IT, and the letter 31, which form 
by their coalition, the triliteral monosyllable, 
together with three mysterious words : bhur, 
bhuvah, swer ; or earth, sky, heaven. These 
three letters, which are pronounced Om or Aum, 
refer to the Deity, in his triple capacity of crea- 
tor, preserver and destroyer. The method of 
using it is given in the same code: "Three 
suppressions of the breath, made according to 
the divine rule, accompanied with the triverbial 



132 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



phrase, bhur, bhu-vah, swer, and the triliteral 
syllable om, may be considered as the highest 
devotion of a Brahmin." Mr. Colebrock informs 
us that a Brahmin beginning and ending a lec- 
ture of the veda, or the recital of any holy 
strain, must always pronounce to himself the 
syllable om, for unless the syllable om precedes, 
his learning will slip away from him, and unless 
it follow nothing will be retained ; for that sylla- 
ble being prefixed to the several names of 
worlds, denotes that the seven worlds are mani- 
festations of the power, signified by that syllable. 
Notwithstanding the pagans taught the oneness 
of Deity they still taught a trinity or threefold 
action of God with about as much clearness as 
the trinitarians of our day, or perhaps they 
made it appear more reasonablo as they treated 
the subject more scientifically. 

The philosophers of all nations (says Eamsey) 
seem to have had some idea of the trijplicity of 
the supreme unity, Plato speaks of the three 
forms of the Divinity, which he calls Agathos, 
Logos, and Psyche; that is, Agathos the sov- 
ereign good, which is the principle of Deity; 
or rather the intelligence, which drew the plan 
of the world ; the Logos, or Word, is the energy 
which executed it ; and Psyche is but another 
name for Isis, indicating the production of the 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



133 



earth, which gives a finish and beauty to the 
whole creation. This is agreeable to the Ma- 
sonic trinity: Wisdom, Strength and Beauty. 
This trinity of Plato also corresponds to the 
New Testament trinity, viz : God the Father, or 
sovereign good; Christ the Logos, translated 
Word in the first chapter of John, by whom the 
Father made all things ; and Psyche, the Holy 
breath, or spirit (foolishly translated Ghost), that 
breathes life into inanimate nature and gives 
beauty to the new creation. 

Fontanelle gives a curious anecdote of a 
response of the oracle Serapis : " Thules, a king 
of Egypt, who as is said, gave the name of 
Thule to the isle now called Iceland ; his empire 
reaching thither, was of vast extent, and being 
puffed up with pride, he went to the oracle of 
Serapis, and thus spake to it: 4 Thou art the 
God of fire, and who governeth the course of the 
heavens, tell me the truth: was there ever, or 
will there ever be, one so puissant as myself V 
The oracle answered him thus : ' First God, then 
the Word and Spirit, all united in one, whose 
power can never end. Go hence immediately, 
Mortal ! whose life is always uncertain/ And 
Thules at his going hence had his throat cut." 
The Greek inscription on the great obelisk at 
Rome, says Chateaubrian, was to this effect: 
8* 



134 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



"The mighty God; begotten of God, and the 
all resplendant Apollo, the Spirit." 

Whenever modern sectarians are pointed to 
the agreement of many of the modern and the 
pagan notions, we are generally informed that 
the Greeks borrowed them from the J ews. The 
facts are far otherwise, for all reliable history 
tells us that Greece borrowed her theology from 
Egypt, the same source that supplied Moses. 
The idea of a pagan trinity was founded upon 
the threefold action of the sun, during the warm 
season of the year. The sun thus characterized, 
is no other than the three-eyed Jupiter, eye and 
sun, being expressed by the same word in most 
of the ancient languages of Asia. This is 
probably the origin and meaning of all the 
trinitary systems, subtilized by Pythagoras and 
Plato, and totally disfigured by their interpre- 
ters. In the ancient British, and other myste- 
ries, the three pillars: wisdom, strength and 
beauty, represented the emblematical triad of 
Deity. It is a fact, that in Britain the Adytum, 
or lodge, was supported by three stones or pillars, 
which were supposed to convey a regenerating 
purity to the aspirant, after having endured the 
ceremony of initiation in all its accustomed 
formalities ; the delivery from between them was 
termed the new birth. The corresponding pillars 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



135 



of the Hindoo mythology were also known by 
the names of wisdom, strength and beanty, and 
placed in the east, west, and south, crowned 
with three human heads. They jointly referred 
to the Creator, who is said to have planned the 
great work by his infinite wisdom ; executed it 
by his strength ; and to have adorned it with 
all its beauty and usefulness for the benefit of 
man. These united powers were not overlooked 
in the mysteries, for we find them represented 
in the solemn ceremony of initiation, by the three 
presiding Brahmins or Hierophants. The chief 
Brahmin sat in the east, high exalted on a bril- 
liant throne, clad in a flowing robe of azure, 
thickly sparkled with golden stars, and bearing 
in his hand a magical wand; thus symbolizing 
Brahma, the creator of the world. His two 
compeers, clad in robes of equal magnificence, 
occupied corresponding situations of distinction. 
The representative of Vishnu, the setting sun, 
was placed on an exalted throne in the west; 
and he who personated Siva, the meridian sun, 
occupied a splendid throne in the South. In 
like manner the Persians, who termed their em- 
blematical Mithratic cave or lodge the Empy- 
rian, feigned it to be supported by three intelli- 
gences, Ormisda, Mithra, and Mithras, who were 
eternity, fecundity, and authority. Similar to 



136 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



this were the forms of the Egyptian Deity, 
designated by the attributes of wisdom, power, 
and goodness; and the sovereign good, intel- 
lect, and energy of the Platonists, which were 
also regarded as the respective properties of the 
Divine Triad. It is remarkable that every 
mysterious system practiced on the habitable 
globe, contained this Triad of Deity. The 
oracle in Damascus asserts that " throughout the 
world a Triad shines forth, which resolves itself 
into a Monad;" and the uniform symbol of this 
three-fold Deity was an equilateral triangle, the 
precise form occupied by our pillars of wisdom, 
strength and beauty. In the mysteries of India^ 
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, were considered a 
triune God, called tri-murti or tri-form. Brahma 
was called the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and 
Siva the judge or destroyer. 

From the foregoing remarks, the conclusion 
is inevitable that the doctrine of the trinitarians 
was a principal ingredient of ancient paganism. 
An idea more ancient than is generally sup- 
posed, and as it was understood and taught by 
them, more philosophical and reasonable than 
the modern notion of three distinct persons in 
one, and one of them born unnumbered ages 
after the others; or, even the more ridiculous 
idea that God has a son as old as himself. The 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



137 



earlier parts of tlie Bible, like all ancient 
writings extant, is shrouded in myths, and en- 
veloped in that glorious mystery that ancient 
writers delighted to throw around their teach- 
ings. The history of the creation, as we have 
it recorded in the first and second chapters of 
Genesis, is no doubt a record of the traditions 
extant in the time of Closes, or at least had 
assumed a written form about that time, as writ- 
ten language was then in its infancy, if ancient 
history is reliable. There are evidently two 
accounts of the creation, differing in detail some- 
what, although agreeing in the main. They 
were probably committed to parchment at dif- 
ferent periods. The first ending at the third 
verse of the second chapter was probably written 
before God proclaimed himself to Moses by his 
new name Jehovah (Exod. 6 chajj. 3 v.), as that 
name does not occur in the first chapter of 
Genesis. Whenever God is named in the first 
account of creation he is called in the Hebrew 
Elohim or Alehim ; in the second he is called 
IeHouah, or Jehovah Elohim. Both are poly- 
theistic and recognize the gods as the actors in 
the creation. The root of the word rendered 
God is El, or as we have it in the Xew Testa- 
ment Eloi, the Hebrew name for the sun ; with 
the ending im the word became plural, and 



138 



THE HIEROPHA.XT. 



ought so to have been translated and made to 
read : " In the beginning the gods created/' etc. 
What then does the word Elohim mean ? What 
did the ancients understand by the term % It 
simply meant the general name for Deity and 
was equivalent to Gods. The first chapter of 
Genesis simply affirms that the Gods created 
the heavens and the earth. The second being 
a Hebrew account, says Jehovah the Gods cre- 
ated, etc., Jehovah being the proper name of the 
Hebrew God. Some authors tell us that an old 
Samaritan version of the Bible commences thus : 
"In the beginning the Goat renovated the 
heavens and the earth," etc. To the uninitiated 
this would pass as simply a typographical or 
clerical error; but an acquaintance with the 
theology of the ancients explains the matter sat- 
isfactorily without supposing a mistake. The 
ancients always contended that nothing came 
from nothing, and that matter once existing 
could never be destroyed; consequently they 
knew nothing of creation, but could only say the 
earth and heavens were renovated. Many of the 
ablest scholars say the Hebrew word "Boro" 
rendered created ought to have been translated 
renovated. Just before the time of Moses the 
Bull of April was the leader up of the heavenly 
hosts, or ushered in the spring, because the ver- 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



139- 



nal equinox was in that constellation. The 
period of creation, as well as the beginning of 
the year, always had its location at the vernal 
equinox ; consequently if we should find a ver- 
sion of the Bible that said the Bull renovated 
the heavens and the earth, we should be at no 
loss to understand it, and furthermore it would 
be orthodox too, for if the creation took place 
about the last of 3Iay, which would bring it 
into the constellation Taurus, it would give us 
for the age of the world about 6000 years ; but 
here is a mystery, let him that hath understand- 
ing unriddle it. But if the creation, or renova- 
tion, occurred in the constellation of the Goat it 
gives about 21,000 years for the creation, and if 
we accept the notion that the earth is only 6000 
years old we must conclude that those Samari- 
tans made a great blunder when they said the 
earth was first renovated in the constellation of 
the Goat. This mystery we shall attempt to 
explain when treating on the precession of the 
equinoxes. But allowing our version of the 
Bible to be correct, we can easily understand 
the perplexity of the ancient writer in attempt- 
ing to go back of the period when old night 
brooded over chaos, to enquire what existed 
before that epoch, and in utter despair of pene- 
trating beyond the darkness that existed before 



140 



THE HIEROPHANT, 



God said let there be light ; lie contents himself 
with describing briefly the wintry state of nature 
anterior to the time when the Elohim of the 
vernal sign said let there be light; and after 
reducing chaos to order, bringing harmony out 
of confusion, and preparing the earth for the 
abode of man, "said let us make man in our 
image/' etc. According to this ancient system 
it was believed that there was a trinity of 
powers or intelligences in each constellation or 
sign, making thirty-six of these powers or gods 
in the zodiac to whom the sun gave his power 
successively during the month that he sojourned 
in the sign; hence in the account of creation, 
the writer either refers to the Elohim of the 
vernal sign or to a convocation of the twenty- 
one having power over the seven warm months. 
In the 11th chap, of Judges, 24th verse, Jeptha 
says to the king of Amnion, "Wilt thou not 
possess that which Chemosh, thy Aleim giveth 
thee to possess ? so whomsoever yaveh, IeHO- 
uaH, or Jehovah, our Aleim shall drive out from 
before us, them will we possess." Again in 
Joshua 10: 42, we read "And all these kings 
and their land did Joshua take at one time, 
because Jehovah Aleim of Israel fought for 
Israel." And again in Judges 1: 19, "And 
Jehovah drave out the inhabitants of the moun- 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



141 



tain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of 
the valley because they had chariots of iron." 
This last quotation furnishes indubitable evi- 
dence of the fact that the early Hebrew writers 
supposed Jehovah was only the God of their 
nation and had no power over the other nations 
only as he was able to overcome them in war by 
the aid of his people. The truth in fact flashes 
upon us from various parts of the Jewish Bible, 
that the J ews were intensely pagan in all their 
notions. 



OHAPTEK VII. 



We may reasonably suppose that the origin 
of man was a most perplexing question to the 
literati of those days, as it has been since that 
period to the present ; although orthodoxy has 
settled it over and over again, yet it will remain 
a problem most perplexing until man is enabled 
to comprehend more of the modus operandi of 
natural law. The learned men were the self- 
constituted teachers of the people, and were oft 
times called upon no doubt to answer some very 
knotty questions, among which most naturally 
the creation of man held a most important 
prominence. How, then, could this question be 
solved so satisfactorily as by an appeal to appa- 
rent nature. It was plain that man after death 
mingled with his mother earth ; hence he must 
have come from the dust, and who so powerful 
as the gods united in solemn conclave to produce 
the last and noblest effect of creative power? 
Hence we have the expression "And Elohim 
(the gods) said let us make man," etc. 

We may, without any great stretch of the 
imagination, transport ourselves in spirit to the 
period just preceding the creation of man. At 
142 



THE IIIEROPHANT. 



143 



that precise period the Elohirn of each month 
had performed their appropriate work ; the dark- 
ness, cold and confusion of winter, had been 
dispelled; the earth was clothed with vegeta- 
tion; the ocean and rivers abounded in fish, the 
songsters warbled in the groves, and the animals 
everywhere roamed unrestrained without a mas- 
ter; but now the last, the mightiest work of 
creation must be accomplished, and to this end 
is summoned a grand council of the gods, and 
results in the grand fiat: " let us make man, in 
our image, after our likeness," etc.; "so Elohim 
created man in his image ; in the image of Elo- 
him, created he him." 

This, the grand event of creative power, could 
be with safety ascribed to the gods, but the 
modus operandi could only be by miracle ; and 
the attendant circumstances, with the principal 
events of his life, must be explained, as were 
the lives of all remarkable characters, in accord- 
ance with the movements and mode of action 
of the heavenly bodies. The name Ad-am is 
compounded from the Greek god Ad-on-es, and 
Am-mon, the father god, and simply means the 
Lord-Father or Father Lord. And the word 
Eve is synonymous with Isis, the Egyptian, 
and Ceres, the Greek goddess, and had her 
domicil in August. 



144 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



The whole story of the temptation, fall, and 
the naming cherubim to guard the way to the 
tree of life, is to be found written in the stars 
after the following manner: "If you take a 
celestial globe, and bring the crest of Cancer to 
the upper meridian, you will find the horizon at 
the two equinoxes in Aries and Libra respec- 
tively, thus showing, by including Aries and 
Libra, an arc of 210 degrees, or seven-twelfths 
of a circle, with Aries and Libra as two pillars, 
on which rests the Royal Arch of the kingdom 
of heaven, and constituting the dominion of 
summer, the reign of fruits and flowers. At the 
coming together of the two seasons, when the 
watery or baptismal months are on the decrease, 
the months of salvation on the increase, and 
approaching summer promises a reward to in- 
dustry, we have the covenant of works, when 
the reward is reckoned of debt; for the promise 
is, that if we plough and sow, in due time we 
shall reap if we faint not ; so at the autumnal 
equinox, in shouting the harvest home and at 
the vintage feast, we have the covenant of grace 
or favor. Commencing then with Aries and 
counting to the sixth month, we find the figure 
of a female, which astronomers call Virgo, a 
virgin in the sixth month. In the Adamic pro- 
jection of the spheres she is called Cavah (pro- 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



U5 



nounced Ka-a-vah) ; in the Chaldaic projection, 
Eve ; in the Egyptic, Isis ; in the Greek, Ceres ; 
in the Latin, Maria; all of these signifying 
mother of life. A little to the north of this 
virgin, in conjugal proximity, we find the con- 
stellation Bootes, the Io-seppe of the Greek 
zodiac, whence our word Joseph; in Phoenician, 
according to Sanchoniathan, Ad-ham, whence 
our word Adam. So here in paradise we find 
Adam and Eve in actual existence.* Immedi- 
ately south and lying along the zodiac, is the 
constellation of the Serpent, extending from 
Cancer to Libra, the length of four constella- 
tions. In this garden of Eden, then, we find 
the man Adham, the woman Eve, and the great 
Serpent. The woman holds in her left hand a 
spike of corn, in which is the brilliant star 
Spica Virginia ; her right hand is extended 
toward Adham or Bootes ; in her right (in the 
common school atlas) she holds a sprig ; in the 
old planispheres, this figure was varied to suit 
the whims of the astrologers, sometimes proba- 
bly fruits and flowers ; for be it remembered 
that according to the Hebrew account she offered 
fruit to Adam, but the Chinese say she gave a 
forbidden rose. " The serpent is said to seduce 

* The word Paradise is compounded of two words^ 
meaning among the stars. 
9 



146 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



the woman. Seduce comes from, or is synony- 
mous with seducere, to lead on, to go before, a 
pioneer. As the constellations of Bootes, Virgo 
and Hydra descend to the western horizon, the 
constellation Perseus, clad in armor with a helmet 
on his head, with a breastplate on, and wings on 
his feet, rises on the eastern horizon. In his 
right hand he holds a flaming sword, in form 
like a Persian cimeter, colored red to designate 
the red stars within its outline; while in his 
left hand he holds the writhing serpents. Per- 
seus represents the cherubim with flaming sword, 
which turns every way to keep the tree of life." 

Although we have been taught to believe that 
the serpent deceived our celebrated ancestors, 
the text does not sustain that view of the sub- 
ject ; for although the Lord said they should 
die on the very day in which they tasted it, yet 
they seem not to have suffered the penalty, but 
lived to corroborate the truth of what the serpent 
assured them, viz : that they should become as 
gods, knowing good and evil. In the third chap- 
ter and twenty-second verse of Genesis, the Lord 
said, " Behold the man is become as one of us, 
to know good and evil." It is a common mis- 
take among the unlettered, to suppose that men 
acquainted with the Hebrew language can solve 
the many difficulties that cluster around the 



THE HIEKOPHAXT. 



147 



original. If you converse with one of the 
learned about the sense of the Bible, he will tell 
you that the Hebrew text reads thus or so, and 
you at once yield your judgment to his assump- 
tion, that because he reads the Hebrew, there- 
fore he is acquainted with the original. Xothing 
can be farther from the truth ; no living man has 
ever seen the original, or a copy of the original. 
The Hebrew Bibles now in use are written in 
the square letter, not invented prior to the third 
century; divided into words (a system of writing 
not introduced in the earliest manuscripts) ; 
punctuated by the "Masora," commencing in 
the sixth and closing about the ninth century; 
and sub-divided into verses (not begun before 
the thirteenth century). 

The same difficulty exists in regard to the 
New Testament; learned men admit that our 
Greek Testament was translated from the bar- 
barous, mongrel Latin, spoken and written in the 
dark ages. These books have run the gauntlet 
through various superstitious sects and parties. 
During the centuries that papacy reigned su- 
preme, the Bible from which our copies came, 
was entirely within its grasp ; the masses were 
steeped to their lips in the grossest ignorance ; 
but few even of the priests could write their 
own name ; and who can tell the changes that 



148 



THE HIEROPHA.NT. 



the sacred text was compelled to undergo while 
they were lords paramount of the civilized world. 

A knowledge of Hebrew and Greek will in- 
deed show us many of the falsities of our trans- 
lation, hut will hardly enable us to know the 
entire sense of the book. It will, however, show 
us that in some books the Egyptian God is the 
hero of the tale, while in others the Chaldean, 
the Ammonian ; the Greek or Hebrew God is 
the being that the writer worshipped. 

Daring eighteen years of the reign of good 
king Josiah, the Hebrew Bible was unknown, 
and how long prior to that is quite uncertain. 
But after the eighteen years had transpired a 
book of the law was found. Where ? by whom ? 
what book was it % The Jews had filled Jeru- 
salem with the temples of Baal ; the temple of 
Jehovah, neglected, was fast hastening to decay ; 
the book of the law was lost, and good. Josiah 
the king, " did that which was right in the sight 
of the Lord," and reigned eighteen years, yet 
knew nothing of the existence of the book of the 
law. What a state of barbarism does not this 
condition of things shadow forth, and how care- 
less of the whole matter Jehovah seems to have 
been, inasmuch as he must have known where 
the book was but did not inform them ; the find- 
ing thereof seeming to have been almost or 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



149 



quite accidental. Even the spirits in our day, 
with all their shortsightedness, would have 
ferreted out the book much sooner. ■ 

The Old Testament is a record of the laws 
of Moses, and the doings of the Jewish kings 
and rulers for a long period. Most of these 
rulers were pagans, and the public archieves 
were in their hands ; and if they did not alter 
the records of the other party, we may at least 
reasonably suppose that during their reign they 
were under their supervision and molded in 
obedience to their view. And when in public 
councils in the christian era, the corrupt pagan- 
istic parties voted in the sacred canon, we may 
reasonably conclude that the works of pagan 
writers would have a pretty fair chance in the 
general seramble. I have no desire to see men 
reject these writings, but when we come to 
realize that we cannot safely hang our future 
destiny upon the translation of works, com- 
piled under such unfavorable circumstances, so 
blended with the superstitious notions of bigoted 
pagans, and handed down to us through such 
corrupt parties ; then, and not until then, will 
we feel the necessity of exercising our reason in 
investigating the claims that any particular part 
of the book may urge upon our attention. 

Allow me, in this connection, to reiterate the 



150 



THE HIEROPHANT, 



affirmation, that I am not warring upon the 
Bible, but simply opposing the dogma of plenary 
inspiration, and treating it as we treat all other 
books. All other writings are subjected to the 
ordeal of reason and common sense, and we are 
permitted to retain the good and throw the bad 
away. Not so the Bible ; accepting the doctrine 
that it is all of God and fully inspired, we are 
compelled to accept the whole, justify the most 
horrid atrocities, and believe in the most de- 
basing and licentious morals, or rather immoral- 
ities; because forsooth, God justified it, or at 
least suffered it. How differently we deal with 
the vices of the pagan gods. We do not justify 
their amours because the gods were the perpe- 
trators ; on the contrary, we justly argue that the 
more exalted the criminal, the greater the crime. 

But we are not driven to that sad dilemma, in 
which we justify oppression, robbery, murder, 
and all the catalogue of blackest crime, for 
which the Jews were notorious, by the assump- 
tion that God ordered or permitted it, and there- 
fore it was right. I would much sooner disbe- 
lieve a Jew, (kind reader forgive the irony) than 
to believe that the God of the universe was so 
straightened for means wherewith to accomplish 
his plans that he must needs violate all and each 
of his own commandments. 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



151 



We believe that the Bible is a compilation of 
the highest conceptions of truth current among 
the Hebrews; that the mysterious, and much 
of the historical parts, are written allegorically, 
that is to say in riddles, but from the nature of 
the conditions under which it was written, it is 
necessarily mingled with much that is spurious 
and unworthy of our credence. The astronomi- 
cal key explains many of its mysteries ; robs it 
of most of its horrors ; rescues many of its wor- 
thies from the foul stains resting upon their 
characters through a misapprehension of the 
meaning of the text. The Scriptures contain 
many sayings and record many events that 
require the utmost credulity to believe them in 
the exact sense that orthodoxy gives. Among 
these we may number Jonah's eventful sea 
voyage ; the sudden halting of the sun and moon 
in their rapid course, in obedience to Joshua's 
command ; Elijah's flight to heaven in a chariot 
of fire; Baalim's ass suddenly endowed with 
human speech ; eating the flesh and drinking 
the blood of the Son of'Man; honeybees build- 
ing their cells and making their honey in the 
putrifying carcass of a dead lion, etc.; all of 
which we believe to be true, but not in the 
accepted sense. 

The war in heaven has been a most fruitful 
9* 



152 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



theme for theological declaimers in all ages. In 
the astronomical diagrams with which I illus- 
trate this subject in my lectures, we have a fac- 
simile of the way in which the ancients recorded 
this deadly conflict among the stars, and how 
every succeeding age has used it for a text book. 
The Neophytes and theological Tyros have been 
prating about this horrid rebellion in heaven, 
without for one moment dreaming from whence 
it came or what its origin might be. In the 
astronomical projection of the spheres, or the 
ancient kingdom of heaven, in the ancient pic- 
ture writing, you can see the conflict raging in 
all its fury, victory alternately perching upon 
the contending banners. At one time we observe 
the myrmidons of the pit, headed by their pow- 
erful leader Baal-zebub, emerging from their 
imprisonment during the reign of summer; 
meeting the Sun of Righteousness at the com- 
mencement of winter in Scorpio, dragging him 
down for a brief period into the lower regions, 
from which triumphantly emerging at the vernal 
equinox, he puts his enemies to flight, consigns 
them again to the bottomless pit, and reigns with 
undisputed sway until the autumnal equinox 
renews the conflict. 

The ancients, like the Eomanists of our day, 
canonized, i. e. deified, all their great leaders, 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



153 



both warriors and civilians. If a powerful 
genius arose, either to gladden or curse the 
world, the unsophisticated masses were ever 
ready to cry out " the gods have come down to 
us in the shape of men;" and consequently after 
their death, if not before, they must of necessity 
be deified; their foibles oft-times buried with 
them, and their virtues and prowess exalted to 
the skies. 

We have repeatedly said the sun was treated 
as God in all symbolical writing; the revolu- 
tions of the sun were the journeyings of God ; 
and the operations and effects of the sun upon 
the atmosphere and earth were the labors and 
conflicts, victories and defeats of God. When- 
ever, therefore, the life of any hero, seer, prophet 
or teacher was written, it was made to agree in 
all important particulars with the course and 
action of the sun, unless perchance, as is often 
the case, the hero of the tale is made to cor- 
respond with one of the planets, as did Abraham 
with Saturn ; or with the moon, or some one of 
the stars, or clusters of stars within the outlines 
of one of the constellations. We have a case in 
point in the mother of Jesus, who has been 
canonized by the pope lately ; her conception, 
her nativity, the annunciation, the assumption, 



154 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



etc., corresponding to the course of the constella- 
tion Virgo in her various relations to the sun. 

The above explanation gives us the true 
interpretation of the miracles attendant upon 
the lives of Baalim, Jonah, Sampson and Elijah ; 
and so many of the actions of Jesus during his 
eventful and checkered life correspond with the 
renowned labors of the sun, that the a did mind 
that masters the subject can scarcely resist the 
conclusion that his biographers have adopted 
the same method that everywhere prevailed at 
that period. The triune character ascribed to 
God also facilitated this peculiar style of teach- 
ing. God (the sun) in his ascension toward the 
summer solstice, and from thence like Elijah to 
heaven (symbolically of course), lets his mantle 
fall upon the descending sun; or Aleim, the 
rising Gods, give their orders to Jonah (I-on-es) 
to go away down south and preach repentance 
to the Mnevites, etc. This hyperbolical method 
of writing may appear so strange to the matter- 
of-fact, or prosaic, inhabitants of this western 
world in the nineteenth century, that the mass 
of common readers must feel disposed to reject 
the testimony on this subject. The masses may 
reject the whole thing in honest ignorance, but 
all learned men know that this method of teach- 
ing by, or in parables, was the universal mode 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



155 



in ancient times, and that it is still perpetuated 
in the east, although much of the art is lost. It 
is said that Jesus always adopted this method 
while publicly preaching. Of this character are 
Esop's fables ; Ovid's metamorphoses, Arabian 
night entertainments; the various histories of 
the Greek, and indeed of all the ancient pagan 
gods; and the various amours of those gods of 
heathendom were the same in character as were 
the amours of the patriarchs, of David and 
Solomon, and are all to be explained by this 
universal method of describing the conjunction 
of the sun, moon, and starry hosts, under the 
figure of individual gods, kings, patriarchs, and 
the various leading men of the realm. 

The main features of this method of teaching 
consists in first stating a self-evident falsehood, 
of a kind that none but children or fools will 
believe, and then wrapping up a grand truth 
inside, in the shape of a moral. After we have 
extracted the moral we can throw the wrapper 
away. Nobody believes that the beasts of the 
field held councils, as described by Esop; or 
that the trees of the forest asked the vine to 
come and be king over them, as says the Bible; 
neither would we believe in the supernatural 
orthodox monstrosoties that elsewhere occur in 
the Scriptures, unless we had been drilled into 



156 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



it from childhood, but would be able to extract 
the moral instead of feeding upon the coarse 
wrapper in which it was enveloped. No doubt 
the universal religious dyspepsia that so abounds 
in the church is to be traced in a great measure 
to this habit of feeding upon the external cov- 
ering and allowing the milk in the cocoanut to 
escape. 

Linguists everywhere teach us that man began 
to talk in monosylables, and it is a favorite 
employment with some, to analyze words and 
find their roots. A knowledge of this art will 
assist us wonderfully in discovering the hidden 
sense of biblical allegorical writing ; and al- 
though a limited knowledge of ancient literature 
opens up to us a vast amount of information, 
yet a more thorough acquaintance with oriental 
languages would greatly facilitate any researches 
in this interesting field of study. It has been 
ascertained that the most ancient name for God, 
or the sun, in Egypt was On, in the Chaldaic 
Bel or Baal, in Phonicia the same, in Hebrew 
El, etc. If they addressed him as a father, they 
would use the word Am or Ab. Ad denoted 
Lord; Es the great fire, the enlightener. The 
emblem of Deity, symbolically written, was I, 
or a pillar, a column, to denote that he stood 
erect alone, without any external support. In 



THE HIEKOPHANT. 157 

examining the allegorical, and much of the 
historical parts of the Bible, the reader, if intel- 
ligent, can hardly fail to observe the frequent 
use made of these prominent monosylables. 
Ad-am, Ab-el, El-i, El-i-jah (jah most high). 
In most cases one of these monosyllables forms 
the base, or root of the word, with such prefixes 
and suffixes as the case demands. Thus in the 
war in heaven, the good angels have their names 
ending in El, the Hebrew; and the fallen ones 
having names ending in On, the Egyptian term 
for the sun ; because, to the Jew, Egypt always 
represented the lower regions, while Caanan 
corresponded to heaven. The good angels were 
Micha-el, Gabra-el, Isra-el, etc.; but the fallen 
hadthe Egyptian name, as the Drag-on, Ab-add- 
on, and Ap-olly-on. According to John's Reve- 
lations, Abaddon is Hebrew, and Apollyon Greek 
(Apollo). We have also Babyl-on, Armaged-on, 
etc. The Jew also took the portrait of the 
sacred bull of Egypt (Taurus) to make their 
Devil from, representing him with horns and 
cloven hoofs ; and Aries (the lamb) as their rep- 
resentative of God. Sometimes they poached 
upon the Chaldeans, for a lay figure from which 
to paint his Satanic Majesty, and called him 
Baal-zebub, or Baal-ial (Belial), although they 
highly honored one of them, Baal Molochi-sudec, 



158 



THE HIEROPHA.XT. 



or Molocli-zedec (Melchisedec), as an everlasting 
priest. 

Many names of the prophets begin or end 
in el, as El-i, El-i-sha, El-i-jah, Dan-i-el, Ezek- 
i-el; and many of them, no doubt, correspond 
to, or are compounded from other names of God 
that have been lost, or are hidden in languages 
known to but few. The name of Joshua com- 
mences with lo, the root of Jehovah, Jupiter, 
Jove, etc. [J is a modern or Latin letter, and 
a substitute for I.] Eve is the feminine of Jove, 
sometimes called Heve in the Greek pantheon. 
The most important bearing that the analysis 
of words has upon this question, consists in 
the key it furnishes to the names given to 
God. The translation gives no correct idea 
of the titles by which God was addressed in 
the Bible. It is known pretty generally that 
Jupiter, Adonis, and Appollo were Greek pa- 
gan gods; that Baal was the Chaldean, and 
Chemosh the Ammonian God. But it never 
enters the thought of the common reader that 
Adonis, Baal, Chemosh, On and Elohim are 
placed on the same footing in the Bible with 
Jehovah. The Eloh-im, the plural of El or 
Eloi, were the creators in the first chapter of 
Genesis. The first, and I believe the only 
proper name given to the Elohim, was that 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



150 



unpronounceable name called Jehovah; in He- 
brew spellad with four consonants, equivalent 
to IHVH. In another part of this volume I 
have spelled it after the manner of Nott and 
Gliddon, in Types of Mankind. In ancient 
Hebrew there were no written vowels, and for 
want of them much time was necessarily con- 
sumed in teaching the student which to use in 
pronouncing each word. This fact accounts for 
much of the confusion that rests upon the whole 
question. The names Dan and Gad were for- 
merly spelled without any vowel, and as the 
language became a dead language before the 
modern points were invented, probably no man 
knows to this day whether those names were 
not pronounced with some other one of the 
vowel sounds. Perhaps Gad was God, and Dan, 
Don; who knows? God told Moses that he 
appeared to the patriarchs as Baal-Tsaddi, and 
that they never knew him by his name J ehovah. 
Baal-Tsaddi is translated God Almighty. Why ? 
A Jew will no more pronounce the name Jehovah 
in the hearing of a Gentile, than a mason will 
the grand omnific word of Masonry in the hear- 
ing of an outsider. Ask a Jew the name of his 
God and he will tell you Adonawye, thus draw- 
ling out the possessive case of Adonis, the Greek 
God. Why ? simply because the Hebrew Bible 



160 



THE HIEROPHANT 



makes Adonis equal with Jehovah, if not 
synonymous. Thus, when David says, "the 
Lord said to my Lord," the Hebrew reads, 
" Jehovah said unto Ad-on-ai." J onah fled from 
the face of Elohim. In Malachi, where the text 
reads "the Sun of Righteousness shall arise," 
the Hebrew reads, " Chemosh shall arise." Che- 
mosh was the abomination of the Moabites (1 
Kings, 11 chap. 7 v.), the Ammonian name for 
the sun. In Revelations the passage that reads 
"Him which is, and which was," in the Greek 
reads, " On which is, and which was." These 
are but a sample of the whole, and we thus find 
that all those Gods are acknowledged in the 
Bible as the true God. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

There is nothing more mysterious in the 
Bible than the cherubim ; yet there is nothing 
that more certainly connects Egyptian worship 
with the Jewish, than does this same mysterious 
creature with his four faces. Moses made an 
ark in imitation of a certain chest that the 
Egyptians carried about with them in their 
solemn processions, when they celebrated the 
feast in commemoration of the ancient state of 
mankind. In this chest they deposited the 
sorry fruits and grains that their ancestors fed 
upon when in a barbarous state. On each end 
of this chest, called the Ark of the Covenant, 
was placed a cherub, each facing the other, with 
their wings lifted up on high, covering the mercy 
seat. ["Exod. 25 chap. 17-20 v.] For further 
descriptions of the cherubim please read Ezek. 
1st and 10th chap., Isaiah 6th chap. 2d verse, 
and Rev. 4th chap. 6-8 v. Isaiah calls them the 
seraphims, evidently the same animal. Ezekiel 
gives them four wings each, John six. Wings 
represent the flight of time, and John's six to 
each were symbolical of the twenty-four hours, 
as were also the four-and-twenty elders, denoting 
161 



162 THE HIEROPHA NT. 

the past, as Mahomet's black-eyed Houris (hours ; 
were emblematical of the future or young hours. 
The singular number of cherubim is cherub ; 
the singular of seraphim is seraph. The first is 
the name of an ox or calf, the latter the name 
of a serpent ; and although it may seem ludicrous 
enough to fill the heavens with oxen and ser- 
pents, and make them common carriers of the 
Almighty, as we read in Psalms, " lie rode upon 
a cherub and did fly;" yet with our astronomical 
key, we shall be able to show the fitness of the 
phrase, and that these same serpents and oxen 
are peculiarly adapted to be the angels or mes- 
sengers of the Almighty, swift to do his wilt. 
Ezekiel in his first description of the cherubim, 
gives them those ever recurring four faces : the 
face of an ox, a lion, an eagle, and a man. In 
his second description he gives the same, except 
that the face of a cherub takes the place of the 
ox, proving the names to be synonymous, In 
Hevelations the four beasts are distinct or sepa- 
rate, while in the other descriptions the four 
faces belong to one animal, although described 
in the plural number. The key to the whole 
mystery is this: the kingdom of heaven was 
always circular, when among the stars ; and the 
wheels within wheels of Ezek were the orbits of 
the sun, moon and planets. When the kingdom 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



163 



of heaven was among men, as in the Jewish 
encampment, it was a square, and those four 
beasts each occupied the angle, or rather were 
the figures that flaunted upon the banners of the 
royal tribes, and constituted the four angels 
standing upon the four corners of the earth, 
holding the four winds of heaven. (Revelations.) 
These four beasts were the constellations that 
had their location at the commencement of the 
four seasons. The ox held the winds of spring, 
the lion the winds of summer, etc. They 
divided the heavens into quarters, two being at 
the solstices and two at the equinoxes. The ox 
gave his name to the four royal beasts or cheru- 
bim, because he was the principal and ushered 
in the reign of summer; in the same manner, 
and for the same reasons probably, that Pales- 
tine was called Judea from Judah, viz : for con- 
venience. 

In the preceding chapters of this work I have 
attempted to show with what intensity of hope 
the nations looked forward to the vernal equinox. 
The cherub was the leader up of the heavenly 
hosts, because he occupied the first month of the 
warm season of the year. But why, according 
to this explanation of the name, does Isaiah call 
them the seraphim, or serpents? 

The next grand point of interest to the an- 
10 



164 



THE HIER0F1IANT. 



cients was the autumnal equinox. This was the 
grand festival season, when after the day of 
atonement (at-one-ment) the Jews, together with 
other nations, held their feast of tabernacles, or 
vine feast, the crowning feast of the year if we 
except that of the vernal equinox or passover. 
The day of atonement occurred on the precise 
day of the equinox, or balancing of the days and 
nights, when they were of equal length, and God 
or nature equalized all things, rewarded the in- 
dustrious with plenty and sent the idler empty 
away. The feast of tabernacles was the same 
as the feast of 'Bacchus of the Gentiles. At 
this feast both J ew and Gentile always imitated 
old Noah in the too free use of wine. Just at 
this point in the heavens we find Scorpio, the 
Egyptian serpent, and at the period of time 
when these cherubim were seen by the prophets, 
Scorpio held the same relation to the harvest 
and vintage home, that the ox did to the reign 
of spring; but the ox represented the covenant 
of works, Scorpio the covenant of grace. The 
query here arises, why the head of the eagle 
occupies the place belonging to the serpent. 
This matter must he explained by a reference 
to the precession of the equinoxes. We have 
stated that the equinoxes were in the ox and 
scorpion when these cherubim were described 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



165 



by the prophets. The vernal equinox is now 
in the sign of the lamb, and in the constellation 
of the fishes. The sun crosses the equator at a 
point about one hundred rods distant from the 
place at which it crossed the preceding* year; 
consequently, the equinox is approaching or 
coming down into the wintry constellations. At 
the rate it thus travels, it passes through one 
sign of thirty degrees in about 2140 years. By 
this process the constellation of Aries, Pisces, 
etc., are ascending into the region of light, and 
Scorpio, Libra, etc., are descending into the land 
of darkness, or the bottomless pit. It was thus 
that the old serpent, the dragon, fell from heaven 
and became the leader up of the hosts of hell. 
The lamb is now the leader up of the hosts of 
heaven, and he and the serpent are the most 
deadly antagonists. 

When Jacob gave his blessing to the twelve 
patriarchs, he assigned the serpent to Dan : 
" Dan is a serpent, an adder in the path," etc. 
But about this time the serpent fell below the 
equinox, became a sign of evil import, and Dan 
rejected him for his monogram because Scorpio 
was the sign accursed, and he took for the figure 
upon his banner Aquila, or the eagle, a constel- 
lation nearly north, having in his neck the large 
star Altair, — a star that is on the horizon at the 



166 



THE HIEROPHANT, 



same period of time with the star Antares, in 
the heart of Scorpio. When Scorpio occupied 
the position in the heavens that the balance 
now holds at the equinox, the serpent held the 
most prominent position as a symbol of life 
among the animal creation, and as some nations 
believed the covenant of grace, or the autumnal, 
to be superior to the covenant of works, (even as 
do many of the religionists of our day) they 
called the whole by the name serpents, or rather 
seraphim. Isaiah saw his cherubim in Judea, 
the land of serpents and generations of vipers 
(Christ), and Ezekiel saw his while in captivity 
in Ohaldea, where the ox no doubt was more 
highly prized. 

By this same process of change Scorpio, will 
yet reach the position now held by the lamb ; be 
transformed into an angel of light, and become 
the leader up of the heavenly hosts, while 
Virgo, Leo, and the whole of the heavenly con- 
stellations, one by one, will fall, as did Satan 
(Saturn) like lightning from heaven. Modern 
astronomers, however, have determined to keep 
the old serpent in the bottomless pit, by making 
the signs of the constellations of Aries and Libra 
follow the equinoxes in their precession. By 
this means the lamb will ever be the leader up 
of the heavenly hosts in the vernal equinox, 



THE H1ER0PHAXT. 



167 



crossificatioii or passover,* and the astronomical 
Hierophant will always be enabled to say to the 
ttnitiated: "behold the Lamb of Goclt that 
taketh away the inequalities of the wintry 
world." The precession has thrown some of 
the ceremonies of the modern church out of 
their proper place, because of the confusion that 
ignorance has brought in the churches. Lent 
is in point ; the observers of this fast having lost 
its origin and purport, do not know when it 
ought to begin or end. 

But to return to the cherubim. John, the 
revelator, saw the four beasts around the throne, 
and a lamb in the midst of the throne, repre- 
senting the vernal equinox in Aries, because the 
lamb was the constellation into which the sun 
came when he triumphantly entered his king- 
dom, having overcome the powers of darkness 

* Xote. — The vernal equinox is said to be in Aries, 
although in fact it is in Pisces that : is in the SIGN of Aries 
but the constellation of Pisces. At a period of time 
quite remote, the vernal equinox will again be in Scorpio, 
and he will regain his lost estate, although astronomers 
probably will mark the SIGN of Aries in Scorpio, and the 
masses will suppose that the vernal equinox is in the lamb, 
unless the knowledge of astronomy covers the earth as 
the waters cover the great deep. 

f The Lamb was GaJ's monogram. 



168 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



and cold in winter, and ascended the throne of 
his glory. 

When Jacob blessed his twelve sons he gave 
to each the peculiarity of one of the constella- 
tions. Judah had the lion ; Reuben, unstable 
as water, had Aquarius, the water bearer; Dan 
the serpent; Issachar the crab. The phrase 
" Issachar is a strong ass," is explained by the 
fact that there are two stars in Cancer called 
the two asses. "Joseph is a fruitful bough, 
whose branches have gone over the wall," rep- 
resents him in November (Sagittarius), when 
the vine had grown to its fullest extent. "His 
bow abode in strength," is explained by a refer- 
ence to the constellation, in which he is drawing 
his bow. The story of the coat of many colors 
is a parable, in which was described the varie- 
gated beauty of the forest in November, 4000 
years ago. This beautiful coat excited the envy 
of the eleven other months, and he was sent into 
Egypt by falling below the intersection of the 
equator and ecliptic. Parabolically, the five 
wintry constellations were Egypt and Sodom. 
These tribes represented the twelve signs of the 
zodiac, and they had a sister named Dinah, who 
was, correspondentially of course, the moon. 
The same name, spelled somewhat differently, 
is Diana of the Greeks, who, as all scholars 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



169 



know, was the moon, and her likeness as she 
draws her bow, is to be seen when the moon is 
at her full, for Diana was a mighty huntress. 
The cherubim was a prominent symbol among 
the ancient pagan nations. One has been dug 
up lately from among the ruins of Xinevah, 
having three of the four faces described by John 
and Ezekiel. When rude winter had expended 
his fury upon the desolated earth, and had been 
compelled to yield his dominion to gentle spring, 
the ox or calf (which then occupied the position 
now held by the lamb) became lord of the ascen- 
dant and the leader up of the heavenly hosts ; 
and when balmy spring, the season of flowers, 
gave place to summer, with its fierce heat, its 
fruits and smiling meads, the dominion passed 
to raging Leo, or the lion, and he in turn became 
the leader, and marshalled his starry phalanx 
upon the heavenly plains. And thus in turn, 
as each succeeding season followed his prede- 
cessor, the dominion passed to the eagle, and 
then to the water bearer, who was represented 
in the cherubim by the face of a man. These 
beasts, as before stated, were on the four ban- 
ners of the royal tribes of Israel. Combined 
into one, or formed into the cherubim, they 
became the representative of the silent flowing 
year. Ezekiel's cherubim had a calf's foot, to 
10* 



170 



THE HIKROPHAN^ 



denote the point on the meridian where the sun 
crossed over at the vernal equinox. Although 
the various nations held the cherubim in such 
high esteem, they generally selected one of the 
four beasts as the object of special worship. 
Thus the ox was worshipped in Egypt, India 
and Britain, China and Japan, Persia, Greece 
and P eru. As the ox was the predominating 
figure in the cherubim, so it was the most uni- 
versal symbol of idolatry, and was frequently 
worshipped in a compound form. He was the 
emblem of Noah or the great father, and the 
ark was called Ken-Taurtis, the stimulator of 
the bull. He was worshipped with splendid 
rites when the sun was in Taurus. A bull was 
also the well-known symbol of Bacchus, who is 
styled in the orphic hymns " the deity with two 
horns, having the head of a bull." The lion 
was adored in the east and in the west, by the 
Egyptians and the Mexicans, as a most powerful 
divinity. The same animal was emblematical 
of the sun in Tartary and Persia ; and hence, on 
the national banner of Persia a lion was eiii- 
blazoned, with the sun rising from his back. 

The sovereigns of Persia have for many cen- 
turies preserved as the peculiar arms of their 
country, the sign of the figure of Sol in the 
constellation of Leo ; and this device, which 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



171 



exhibits a lion coucliant and the sun rising at 
his back, has not only been sculptured upon 
their palaces and embroidered upon their ban- 
ners, but has been converted into an order, 
which in the form of gold and silver medals 
have been given to those who have distinguished 
themselves against the enemies of their country. 
As the chief increase of the Xile occurred when 
the sun was passing through Leo, the Egyptians 
made the lion the type of an inundation. All 
effusions of water were specified by this charac- 
teristic; and from, this has come the custom of 
passing the water from reservoirs and fountains 
through the mouth of a sculptured lion. 

The eagle was sacred to the sun in many 
countries, particularly in some parts of Egypt, 
Greece and Persia. In our Bible the king of 
Babylon is termed an eagle. It was reputed to 
have fed Jupiter with nectar in the Cretan cave, 
and was certainly an emblem of his dominion. 
With the British Druids it formed a symbol of 
their supreme God ; it was embroidered on the 
consecrated banner of the Mexican princes ; and 
the common ensign of the Rotnan legions was 
the golden eagle. 

The man, or idol in human shape, was wor- 
shipped all over the world; for which custom 
this reason has been assigned by Porphiry, when 



172 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



charged with worshipping God under the figure 
of a man. He allowed the Deity to be invisible 
but thought him well represented in that form ; 
not because he is like him in external shape, 
but because that which is divine is rational. 

Dr. Reese remarks that " cherub, or cherubim 
in Hebrew is sometimes taken for a calf or ox. 
In Syraic and Chaldaic the word cherub signi- 
fies to till or plough. According to Grotius, the 
cherubim were figures resembling a calf. Bo- 
chart and Spencer think they were similar to 
an ox. The figure of a cherubim was not 
always uniform, since they are differently de- 
scribed in the shapes of men, eagles, oxen, 
lions, and a composition of all these figures put 
together. After all the suggestions and conjec- 
tures of learned persons, it still remains to be 
determined what these emblematical figures were 
intended to represent." Thus much for Dr. 
Reese and the learned persons ; if they would 
but give ancient paganism a candid investiga- 
tion they would never again manifest their igno- 
rance by saying, " it remains to be determined 
what they wer# intended to represent.' ' The 
various cherubim no doubt differed much in their 
form and general appearance. The most com- 
mon form may have been, and probably was the 
ox. The brazen laver of Solomon's Temple 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



173 



rested upon twelve oxen, representing the twelve 
constellations. Moses was such a firm believer 
in the lamb emblem, that probably the cherubim 
upon the mercy seat had the face of a lamb, as 
he was directed to set them on the lid of the ark 
facing each other over the mercy seat; the 
vernal equinox having passed into the lamb, 
consequently he had become the leader up of 
the heavenly hosts. After the death of Joshua 
the Jews relapsed into semi-barbarism and lost 
the knowledge of this science, and the lamb 
was not perpetuated in the nation as the leader. 
After the Babylonish captivity, Ezekiel and 
Daniel revived the system, but as the Chaldeans 
had retained the ox, he still continued to figure 
as lord of the ascendant in the cherubim which 
they saw. In the New Testament era the lamb 
was introduced again, but was placed by John 
in the midst of the other beasts, because the ox 
had become too sacred to be displaced. The 
cherubim that was lately exhumed at Ninevah 
had but three faces, it being deficient in the face 
of the man, thus no doubt representing the period 
when there would be no winter, or in other words 
it prophesied the millenium. But be their form 
ever so varied, the cherubim was undoubtedly 
an astronomical figure or symbol representing 
time, or the seasons in their revolutions. This 



174 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



symbol is capable of a great variety of applica- 
tions and adaptations to the demands of the 
curious ; consequently it formed the basis of an 
almost endless variety of parables or riddles, 
and assisted the Revelator most wonderfully in 
making up the Apocalypse. I have already 
made the remark that in the encampment of the 
Israelites, which was in the form of a hollow 
square, the four royal tribes at the angles had 
these four beasts emblazoned on their banners. 
The earth was then supposed to be an oblong 
square, stationary, and the grand centre of the 
universe. By turning to the forty -ninth chapter 
of Genesis, you will find the record of the 
blessings bestowed by Jacob upon his twelve 
sons. In that record you may learn which were 
the royal tribes, and what constellation in the 
zodiac each tribe would represent. 

In the arrangement of the encampment by 
Moses (Numbers, chap. 2) the blunder was com- 
mitted by placing Reuben on the south side, or 
next to Judah. Judah was the lion's whelp, 
and had the east assigned to him. According 
to the science, we should naturally suppose that 
the lion being in the summer solstice, the south 
would have been his appropriate position; but 
as he constituted the " empire state " of the 
nation they probably placed him in van as they 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



175 



were travelling eastwardly. Be his position, 
however, right or wrong upon the east, Reuben 
belonged opposite, as the water-bearer, his mono- 
gram or presiding genius was in January, oppo- 
site Judah or July. Either Closes was not 
learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, or 
which is most probable, he never arranged the 
tribes as here described, unless Reuben had 
exchanged banners with Ephraiin. The proba- 
bility is that they lost the knowledge of astron- 
omy during the wars and convulsions that 
followed the death of Joshua, and that in writing 
their history from tradition they made this mis- 
take. We have said that the cherubim divide 
the heavens into four equal parts. These points 
of division are marked by four principal stars, 
one in each of the four beasts, viz : Aldebaran, 
in the head of the bull of April; this star marked 
the point of the vernal equinox when the plan- 
isphere was projected, or when the bull or ox 
became the lord of the ascendant. The star 
Regains, in the heart of the lion, marked the 
summer solstice ; Airfares, in the heart of the 
scorpion, marked the autumnal equinox in the 
old Chaldean and Egyptian zodiacs, but Dan, 
and probably others rejected Scorpio because 
it had become the sign accursed, and in its place 
adopted Aquila the eagle, having the star Altai* 



176 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



for its emblem. The star Fomalhaut, in the eye 
of the great southern fish, formerly reckoned in 
the constellation Aquarius, and united with it by 
the river Aquarius, marks the point of the winter 
solstice. In was the custom in ancient times, 
and even in comparatively modern, to place the 
figures of the cherubic animals on the title pages 
of their books to indicate the subject therein 
contained. For an example : if the cherubim 
had prefaced the second chapter of Genesis 
commencing at the 4th verse, at which the book 
should begin : " these are the generations of the 
heavens," etc., they would thus indicate that 
allegorical astronomy was to be found on its 
pages. The knowledge of the cherubim, as we 
have repeatedly shown, was by no means original 
with Moses or the Jews, for we find them often 
alluded to in the ancient Chaldean writings as 
the cherubim of the heavens, and they often treat 
of the heaven of the cherubim. 

The ancient Egyptians describe four sacred 
animals, which Clemens Alexandrinus tells us 
were carried like those of the Israelites, at the 
head of their processions ; and he tells us they 
represented the four seasons, of which animals 
the eagle was one. In the Persian zendavesta 
we are told of the ancient Persian cherubim, 
with the four principal stars which watched over 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



177 



the four corners of the world. Bailey's Ancient 
Astronomy, volume I., shows that these are the 
four stars which determine the four seasons or 
solstices. In Daniel's vision of the four beasts 
he undoubtedly followed the Persian projection 
of the spheres. In the earlier editions of the 
four Gospels, the lion was the vignette of Mat- 
thew ; the bull faced the title page of Luke ; 
the face of a man, or Aquarius, was the vignette 
of Mark, and the eagle was the frontispiece of 
John. In John's vision of the white throne and 
the four beasts (Rev. ch. 4), the cherubic beasts 
including the calf, were "in the midst of the 
throne and round about the throne;" but in the 
oth chapter he saw another beast in the midst 
of the four beasts, even a lamb, as it had been 
slain, having seven horns and seven eyes. 
These beasts had eyes before and behind, rep- 
resenting the stars, while the seven horns and 
seven eyes of the lamb are the seven planets. 
On the large stained window of old Trinity 
Church on Broadway, New-York city, you may 
see the four Evangelists, each with his cherubic 
beast; Matthew with his lion, Luke with his 
bull, Mark with his man, and John with his 
eagle. 

Thus from the earliest ages, and throughout ^ 
the various nations of the earth, these four 



178 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



beasts liave been the sacred emblems of religion. 
They have occupied the foreground of every 
pagan system; they were the Elohim that, ac- 
cording to Genesis, created or renovated the 
earth ; they were the cherubim upon the mercy 
seat; they were the beasts most prominent in 
the visions of the prophets throughout the Old 
and New Testaments. They constituted the 
coat of arms of the Evangelist, and last of all 
the most puissant old Trinity, the mother of a 
haughty brood of pagan churches in New- York 
city, thus heralds forth her paganism by giving 
these four living creatures a most prominent 
seat in her synagogue. 



CHAPTER IX. 



Thus far I have been gleaning from all 
religions and forms of belief in order to show 
that every form of religion, and every doctrine, 
has always had its counterpart in various parts 
of the world, and that they are all the children 
of one common parent. Theologians are com- 
pelled to admit that many of the doctrines and 
forms of the pagans are identical with the chris- 
tian system, but they always contend that the 
pagans gathered their ideas from the Jews or 
christians. 

In teaching theology in our colleges, it is not 
to be supposed that the student will go beyond 
the Greek and Roman church, and thus when 
there appears any similarity it is disposed of in 
a summary manner. I have been purposely 
bringing my evidences from a period of time 
anterior to the Jewish and christian era. In 
fact most, if not all, of the Greek and Roman 
paganism was borrowed from the Egyptian, and 
was consequently older than the Jewish. Two 
nations of the east claim David and Solomon as 
their ancient kings, and endow them with the 

same qualities. The Arabs of the desert, in 
179 



180 



THE HIKROPHANT. 



their national legends, recount the military 
prowess of the one and the great wisdom of the 
other. A large proportion of the history of each 
if not fabulous, is written according to the pat- 
tern shown to and by the learned in the mount 
or high places, where the schools initiated their 
followers in the mysteries of the kingdom of 
heaven. David's wars, concubinage, and wicked 
amours with Bath-Sheba, and that fairest virgin 
of all Israel, were the mystical personifications 
of the conjunctions of the sun, moon and starry 
hosts. David in his royal state, was the sun of 
the nation over which lie reigned, and the con- 
junction of the sun with the lesser orbs were 
related as though they were the actions of men 
and women. His conflicts, even if some of them 
were real, were amplified to correspond to the 
conflicts of the sun with the frosts of winter, 
and his victories made to compare in brilliancy 
with the complete triumph of the sun in the 
summer solstice. The kings whom he subdued 
represented or were the wintry constellations, 
with their numerous starry hosts, who were put 
down by David (the sun) when he ascended the 
throne of Es-ra-el and reigned in power in the 
season of plenty. His intrigue with Bath-Sheba* 

* Note. — Bath is Daughter, Sheba is seven ; Bath- 
Sheba was the Daughter or Virgin of the seven summer 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



1S1 



means nothing more nor less than the entrance 
of the sun into the constellation of Virgo, the 
prolific mother of so many children, who are 
always of the royal lineage. Her husband Uriah 
(Ur-i-ah), the high or exalted light, is the same 
constellation (Youseppe) that is always on the 
right of the virgin, and alluded to when treating 
on paradise in a former chapter. Bath-Shebah 
was the daughter of El-i-am (the sun, the self- 
existent, father) ; she was also the mother of 
Sol-om-on (the name of the sun in three lan- 
guages), containing the trinity of Deity in his 
own name ; also the grand omnific word, and was 
thus, from his peculiar lineage, viz : child of the 
sun by the harvest queen, the virgin of August, 
who yearly gives birth to a royal child and yet 
ever retains her virginity. — fitted for a presiding 
genius of the Masons, for wisdom personified, 
and as a household god of all the eastern nations. 

The allegory representing David in his old 
age as feeble and losing his heat, to remedy 
which the fairest virgin in all Es-ra-Ei was 
brought to him, was invented to explain a phe- 
nomena in nature but little understood at the 
time. The summer solstice was then in Leo, 

constellations. The Queen of Sheba was the same Virgin, 
the queen of the same seven; that story being another 
allegory. 

11 



182 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



but August, where Virgo lias her domicil, was 
so much hotter than June, that in the then 
infancy of natural science the learned explained 
it, as theology has always explained its difficul- 
ties, by wrapping it up in a myth. They there- 
fore said that the heat of the virgin of August 
was added to the rays of the sun to perpetuate 
his heat as he was travelling down toward 
winter. In the name of this virgin we also find 
the root of the name of the sun in three dialects. 
It is said that old David was covered with more 
clothing by his servants before the virgin's heat 
was added to his, denoting that even the clothing 
of a bounteous harvest could not perpetuate his 
heat. The story of Tamar, the daughter of 
David, ravished by her own brother, seems to be 
a reproduction of the same allegory, for like 
Joseph she had a dress of variegated colors, 
denoting the beauty of the landscape in the 
harvest month. 

We have another personification of the travels 
and conflicts of the sun in the history of Samson. 
Samson in Hebrew means light. His great 
strength lay in his hair, just as the strength 
of the sun is in his rays, for the sun shorn of 
his locks is almost powerless. Samson's great 
strength manifested itself in Leo at the summer 
solstice, when he slew the lion by absorbing him 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



183 



in his rays; lie was then on his way down to 
Timnah ; on his return, after a period going down 
to Timnah again, he finds honey in the carcass . 
and fed upon it. The explanation of this is to 
be found in the fact that in ancient maps of the 
heavens Leo was represented with bees passing 
in and out of his mouth ; even this however, is 
not necessary to the proof, for Leo, about' 4000 
years ago, was the honey month or the season 
of the greatest profusion of flowers. Is it to 
be supposed that the honey bees ever were silly 
enough to build their cells and commence laying 
up their winter's store in the decomposing car- 
cass of a lion, or if not decomposing one that 
would be speedily devoured by wild beasts? 
If, in reply to this, some superstitious one ex- 
claims, "all things are possible with God," I 
answer, I do not think it possible to create bees 
so silly. Samson after the great exploit goes to 
Gaza (Goat of December), and at midnight 
(Christmas morn), takes away the gates and 
carries them upon his shoulders up to the top of 
an hill that was before Hebr-on. Afterward he 
is shorn of his locks just at the time that he 
leaves the lap of Delilah (Virgo). The Bible 
says he was shorn of his seven locks ; these seven 
were the seven warm months wherein the strength 
of the sun lay ; having lost these seven months, 



184 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



winter — the signs of evil import (Philistia), put 
out his eyes, and he was carried blind down 
to Gaza into the depth of winter, and was there 
in prison. Now it came to pass that as the lords 
of the Philistines met in the temple of Dag-on, 
Samson took hold of the pillars of the temple 
and slew more at his death than during his life. 
These pillars of the temple were the same as the 
posts of the gate that he carried away at a former 
period; but here the scenery or adjuncts, or the 
external covering of the same story are changed. 
In the former case when he carried away the 
gates the writer represents the sun as sleeping, 
and at the exact moment of the winter solstice 
arising from his slumber to inaugurate the new 
year, and at midnight, or exactly twenty minutes 
after, tearing down the gates of winter, or frost, 
and taking them on his shoulders up to the hill 
Hebr-on, or the vernal equinox. In this the 
writer represents the expiring year in Dag-on 
(the fish god), or the constellation of the fishes, 
as destroying the power of winter, because in 
his death he breaks the power of the old year 
and gives place to the new year's sun, who is 
born in three days after his death ; for it must 
needs be that the sun or the old year dies that he 
may rise again, and thus fulfill all righteousness. 
In a preceding chapter I called attention to 



THE HIEROPH A NT. 



185 



names and analyzed some of them. Although 
the truth of our theory does not depend upon 
this for proof, yet lessons of importance may he 
learned by studying these facts. In mystic or 
parable writing the ancients made use of ficti- 
tious names, as do our modern writers of romance 
or tales. But a very common method in vogue 
among them consisted in using the names of'the 
sun, as I have before remarked, compounded 
often threefold to denote the trinity, but whereas 
a continued repetition of the same name would 
explain the riddle without the necessity of 
ploughing with Samson's heifer (Taurus), there- 
fore the name itself was commonly hidden under 
the veil of a foreign language, or by transposing 
the roots or monosyllables. With our limited 
knowledge of ancient languages we are struck 
with the frequent recurrence of these names of 
the sun in some of the dialects with which we 
are acquainted; probably a better acquaintance 
with those ancient idioms would add vastly to 
our stock of knowledge in that particular. I 
stated that Om, On, Ah, Ad, Am, Ac, Io, EI, Es, 
1-ah or Jali, and some others are the simple 
names of the sun or God. Let us apply this 
test to the story of Samson, and although it may 
appear rather imaginative, in this case it may 
assist us in analyzing other words. Manoah 



186 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



was the father of Samson. Transpose the first 
two syllables and we have Am-on-ah, viz : the 
father, being, most high. Take from Samson 
the veil of the letter s repeated, and you have 
Am- On. Take from Delilah the letter d and we 
have El-il-ah, the name of the sun repeated, 
ending in ah, the same ending as has Jehovah. 

The story of the foxes is no doubt a bungling 
translation. The word foxes and sheaves are so 
nearly alike in the Hebrew that one was taken 
for the other by the translators. The parable 
was intended to represent a period of intense 
heat, when the sun in supposed wrath set fire to 
the already gathered harvests of Philistia. All 
nations having a literature have left on record 
traditions of intense heat, caused by the sun 
wandering from his course and threatening the 
world with a general conflagration, which con- 
flagration they say will yet take place. This 
tradition has furnished material for scores of 
allegories which in various forms have descended 
to us. Jesus uses it to describe the speedy de- 
struction of the J ewish nation, under the figure 
of a general conflagration of heaven and earth. 
The burning up of the Philistines' harvest is 
a fragment of the same story. The story of 
Baalim and his ass is the same allegory, under 
another form and surrounded by other scenery. 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



187 



Baalim was the name given to the twelve con- 
stellations, or in other words the plural of Baal. 
In this case he was the sun personified, or the 
united power of the Baals combined in the sun. 
The time chosen by the writer was when the 
sun was in June, in conjunction with the two 
stars called the asses by astronomers [see Jacob's 
blessing on Issachar], the same on which Jesus 
rode in triumph into Jerusalem. Baalim is 
represented as riding on one of them until he 
comes to a boundary (tropic- of Cancer), repre- 
sented by a wall, and at this point the ass sees 
the angel of the Lord, who with a drawn sword 
forbids his farther progress. Here the ass is 
represented as speaking, in the same sense — that 
is, allegorically — that the vine speaks when it 
says: " shall I leave my wine that cheereth the 
heart of God and man?" etc. (Judges, 19 : 13.) 

The Greek writers have given us the most 
complete record of the intense heat, and the 
dangers of a general burning that once occurred 
in consequence of the sun's aberration from his 
proper course in the allegory of Phaeton. They 
say that the intense heat of that period dried up 
the blood of the Ethiopians and turned their 
skins black. Phaeton by craft obtained per- 
mission of his father Phoebus to drive the chariot 
of the sun for one day, but the prancing steeds, 
11* 



188 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



soon learning that a mere child held the reins, 
left their proper course and dashed away toward 
the north and soon threatened the world with 
destruction. Here follows a dialogue between 
Jupiter and the sun, in which the subject is 
condensed into a few words. A more extended 
account will be found in Burnt' s Geography of 
the Heavens, or any work on ancient Greek 
mythology. 

Jupiter. Wretch, what have you done, to 
leave your chariot to be guided by a young fool, 
who has burnt up one-half of the world and 
froze up the other; insomuch that had not I 
struck him down to the ground with a thunder- 
bolt there had been an end of mankind. 

Sun. I confess, Jupiter, I was mistaken that 
I could not manage my son, nor endure the tears 
of a mistress ; but I did not think so much mis- 
chief would have come of it. 

Jupiter. Did not you know the fury of your 
horses, and that if they turned never so little 
out of the way, an universal ruin followed. 

Sun. I know it very well, and therefore I 
put Phaeton into the chariot myself, and gave 
him all necessary instructions, but the horses 
not finding their conductor with them took head, 
and he became dazzled with the splendor of the 
light, and frightened with the abyss he saw 



THE HTEROPHANT. 



189 



beneath him. But lie has been .sufficiently 
punished, and I also in his punishment. 

Jupiter. In the meantime, give Phaeton's 
sister orders to buiy him on the banks of the 
Eridanus, where he fell, and as a recompense I 
will change them into poplar trees, from which 
Amber shall distill, as a symbol of their tears. 

The change of names of the patriarchs had 
also an astronomical signification, and was sim- 
ply the process of conferring a title, a practice 
that has been perpetuated. Abram was the first 
or father of time, and it was as the personifica- 
tion of time that his offspring would exceed the 
sand and stars in number, and it was by the 
addition of ah that he became the father of 
elevation, the word iah or all denoting the most 
high. Isaac was more particularly the sun, the 
offspring of time. His name analyzed is Is-a-ac 
or Es-a-ac ; Is the fire, a one or first, and ac the 
root of Bacchus, which is the first fire or heat of 
Bacchus. Jacob analyzed is J, the self-existent ; 
ac, Bacchus, and ob, the serpent. Es-au was 
the first fire or first born ; but Jacob, under the 
name of the Father Serpent, cheated him out of 
his birthright, and had his name changed to Is- 
ra-el, the Father, Sun, etc. His twelve sons were 
the twelve months or constellations, and his 
daughter Dinah was the moon, the same as 



190 



THE HIEROPHAVr. 



Diana of the Greeks, although spelled differently 
for a veil to the riddle or parable. 

The parable of Abraham about to offer up 
Isaac is a beautiful myth relating to the vernal 
equinox. Isaac (the sun) was brought by time 
up to the same mount to which Samson carried 
the gates of Gaza, viz: the vernal equinox; but 
Isaac escaped and went on his way rejoicing, 
while the ram, or lamb of March was caught in 
the thicket, caused by the conjunction of the 
equator, the ecliptic, and the sun, and was alle- 
orically offered upon the altar. 



CHAPTEE X. 



The serpent as a symbol deserves a more ex- 
tended notice than the brief remarks in a pre- 
ceding portion of this volume. Serpent worship 
became the most wide spread system of any 
simple symbol worship under heaven. He fig- 
ured in heaven extensively, and was the leader 
up of the hosts of hell. He brought in death 
and all the ills that flesh is heir to, and yet he 
was the symbol of health, of wisdom, and of 
beauty. While the race was writhing under the 
effects of his bite through Eve, but more espe- 
cially while the Israelites were dying from his 
venom in the wilderness, he was crucified in a 
brazen form as a saviour from his own poison ; 
and to accomplish this the J ews must needs, by 
the express command of Jehovah, violate another 
command of his, viz : that which forbade the 
Jews to bow down to graven images. I have 
already hinted that the serpent, in consequence 
of his form, superseded that gross form of sym- 
bolical worship : the PhaJlim worship of India 
and Egypt. The reptile has himself been both 
the dread and wonder of man in all ages, whether 
considered as an emblem of God or the Devil. 
191 



192 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



As an emblem of the former, he lias inspired a 
religions awe and veneration; as a symbol of 
the latter, he has ever been considered a sign of 
evil import. On the one hand, his bite has 
produced speedy death; on the other, he has 
possessed virtues that have arrested the march 
of the grim destroyer when all other remedies 
have failed. He is the genius of the practi- 
tioners of the healing art, symbolizing their 
skill if not their subtlety ; also the cause of the 
most baneful disasters that torment the race. 
As a seraph in heaven, he is represented as 
unceasing in his praises ; as a devil in hell, he 
is the uncompromising enemy of God; as the 
chief of police in heaven, he was ever ready to 
do the bidding of Jehovah, as a lying spirit in 
the mouth of Ahab's prophets, or to tempt David 
to number Israel; and as the arch fiend in Pan- 
demonium, he is represented as incorrigible in 
his disobedience to the mandates of heaven. 
He is called by John (Rev. 12 : 9) the great 
Dragon, that old Serpent, called the Devil, and 
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. These 
four names, then, are synonymous. Ancient 
astronomers have given the name Dragon to the 
great serpent of the pole; the same that John 
represents as having seven heads and ten horns. 
In the language of another, writing upon the 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



193 



peculiar fitness of the serpent as a symbol: 
"Serpents were worshipped in Persia, and 
throughout the east, and had temples built to 
their honor, under the express titles of "the 
greatest of all gods, and the superintendent of 
the whole world.' By their truly magnificent 
and silent motion in progression, they repre- 
sented the elliptical orbits of the planets;' and 
their bright scales the countless millions of 
stars, revolving orbit within orbit, yet never 
clashing; and advancing, as our whole solar 
system has [by the only late discoveries of 
Halley, Lemonnier, Cassini, and Herschell,] 
been ascertained to be advancing, the whole 
together through infinite space toward the con- 
stellation Hercules ; yet all guided by one pur- 
pose, all with one life instinctive. Their motion 
without the aid of limb, or any splitting or 
division of the body in any parts, presented the 
most lively type of the unity of the Godhead, 
his independence of all foreign support or assist- 
ance, his strength in life being in himself. By 
putting his tail in his mouth the serpent is the 
emblem of eternity ; by shedding its skin it is * 
an emblem of immortality, so curiously and 
enigmatically described by St. Paul : ' not that 
we would be unclothed, but clothed upon,' By 
its hissing noise is represented the voice of God, 



194 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



which was never distinctly articulate, but always 
very terrible, as Jeremiah assures us * that the 
Lord will kiss unto them from the end of the 
earth : and he will hiss for the fly of Egypt.' 
But, above all, its sanitive or healing powers 
rendered the serpent the universal emblem of 
health and salvation, and the invariably atten- 
dant symbol of the gods called Saviours : Her- 
cules, Apollo, iEsculapius, Bacchus, Mercury, 
Adonis, — all are characterized and known as 
Saviours by the accompanying symbolic ser- 
pent." 

The serpent having become a universal sym- 
bol, and with his tail in his mouth representing 
eternity, the universe, the sun, life and death, 
heat and cold, etc. ; symbolizing, indeed, a great 
variety of forces and passions, became a subject 
of a great variety of enigmas. One great art in 
ancient hierogiyphical writing consisted in a 
metamorphosis of one being into another, or a 
system of metonymy by which, according to 
Walker, one word is put for another, while 
metamorphoses is a change of shape. Ovid's 
metamorphosis, as a sample of the latter, has 
stood the test of time, and is a work that all 
should read who can look within the veil in 
which it is enshrined. The allegories about the 
serpent are of this kind * by metonymy the name 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



195 



serpent is put for the sun, whenever the writer 
needed it in his plot, and the sun under this veil 
was metamorphosed as the imagination or whim 
of the writer demanded. He was thus meta- 
morphosed into the seraph in heaven, and the 
arch fiend in hell ; and according to the Apostle 
it is no marvel, "for Satan himself is trans- 
formed into an angel of light." In Isaiah he is 
called Lucifer, son of the morning, rendered in 
the margin of some Bibles, Day Star, the same 
name that is applied to Jesus in the Xew Tes- 
tament, or as he calls himself in Revelations, 
"I [Jesus] am the bright and morning star." 
Again, "to him that overcometh will I give the 
morning star," that is Lucifer ; the name itself 
meaning bearer of light. This metonymy is 
illustrated in the case of the two Sauls. The 
name Saul, in the Hebrew Sheol, is in some 
places translated "hell. Saul, then, was a per- 
sonification of hell, that is to say the Devil or 
the Serpent. When the Jews were determined 
to have a king against the will of God, he served 
them as he does all rebels, — sent the Devil to 
reign over them until the period of their deliv- 
erance from the wintry state, when Sheol, Hell, 
and the Devil, must needs give place to David, 
who by metonymy was the sun in his summer 
tour. His trouble from Saul typified the genius 



196 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



of cold seeking to destroy the first flush of spring. 
The meeting of the two in the cave was sym- 
bolical of the birth of the year on Christmas 
morn, in that veritable astronomical cave where 
all the gods are born, or where they rise from 
their three days incarceration. The other Saul 
was this same Sheol or Hell, and in his breathing 
out slaughter against the church proved himself 
a worthy representative of the lower regions^ 
Journeying to Damascus he was stricken blind, 
and thus continued without eating during the 
mystical three days that the sun seems lifeless 
at the winter solstice. By metonymy Saul 
(Sheol) was the sun descended into hell, stricken 
blind in the winter solstice, and then coming up 
from the lower regions into summer he preaches 
the faith, the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire 
that he attempted to destroy while in the wintry 
state. His name is now metamorphosed into 
Paul, an abbreviation of Apollo, who under this 
name was God in heaven, and under the names 
Ap-ol-yon and Ab-ad-on was the Devil, that old 
Serpent in hell. The first inkling we have of 
the serpent endowed with speech in the Bible 
was in his celebrated colloquy with mother Eve. 
[The word Eve itself means serpent.] In this 
dialogue he affirmed that if our ancestors but 
tasted the forbidden fruit they would become as 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



1*97 



"the Gods, knowing good and evil." God him- 
self, or rather Jehovah the Gods, said among 
themselves, " man has become as one of -us, know- 
ing good and evil." The serpent is represented 
as the adversary of God and man, from adver- 
sarius of the Latin. The word simply means 
opposite, the reverse to. A line drawn through 
the Lord of the Ascendant, that is the constella- 
tion in which the sun happens to be at the time, 
would pass through the Diabolus or Lord of the 
opposite sign. The terms Adversary of the 
English, Le Diahle of the French, Diabolus of 
the Greek, etc., came from the simple idea that 
the genius of cold and darkness is antagonistic to 
the sun, and is ever standing over as an opposer ; 
hence all lovers of warmth necessarily look upon 
the opposing forces in nature as evil, or personi- 
fied into the Devil. An ox gives the favorite 
form, after which image modern theology paints 
its Devil, with his horns and cloven hoofs ; and 
yet this same ox, under the name of cherub and 
cherubim, is represented as the body guard of 
Jehovah in heaven; and the snake, under his 
proper name of seraph and seraphim, unceas- 
ingly chants his praises. Most of the important 
grains — wheat, rye, barley, etc., derive their 
generic name from the serpent tribe. They are 
called cereals from Ceres (Virgo), the Greek 



198 



THE HIEROPHANT, 



harvest queen ; the word Ceres being a compound 
of cer, the first syllable of cerastes, the snake; 
and es, the great fire, the sun. The snake is 
peculiarly a denizen of the warm regions; in 
winter he becomes torpid, consequently if he had 
been banished to the north pole, instead of that 
hotter region after his rebellion, he would have 
been powerless for evil, and all the machinery 
of salvation, including popes, cardinals, arch- 
bishops, bishops, priests, missionaries, splendid 
cathedrals, prophets and apostles, inquisitions, 
creeds and formularies, and even the death of 
God himself would necessarily be dispensed with, 
and the vast army of non-producers who now 
live upon the fears and ignorance of the people, 
would of necessity have been educated to follow 
some useful employment and preach by their 
living, instead of living by their preaching. 

We perceive, then, the Devil in the possession 
of every variety of names that represent inter- 
changeably the most exalted forces and senti- 
ments, and also their opposite. He is called 
Lucifer, bearer of light; he is called the Son of 
the Morning; he is the seraph and seraphim, 
the cherub and cherubim of the heavens ; he is 
the roaring lion of the zodiac, walking around 
seeking whom he may devour, — being simply a 
metamorphosis of the lion of the tribe of Judah, 



THE HIEUOPHANT. 



199 



who in his yearly travels devours or swallows 
up the stars of the constellations through which 
he passes. He is the accuser, but not called the 
false accuser, — but the state's attorney of the 
universe, whose business it was to hunt up and 
tempt and try the villains or supposed wicked 
ones of earth, and report to the Almighty, as he 
did when he presented himself with the sons of 
God before his throne. " As the adversary of 
light he is of necessity the prince of darkness. 
As the earth presents its whole surface succes- 
sively to the sun, the illuminated half was the 
kingdom of heaven; while the dark side, being 
adverse to the sun, was symbolically represented 
as the kingdom of the powers of darkness, and 
literally called Hades, or the Invisible World, 
or Hell, or the Bottomless Pit, (which, indeed, 
most literally is bottomless, there being no bottom 
nor conceiveable limit to the extent of infinite 
space,) towards which the earth presents its ad- 
verse or diabolical surface; and it is none other 
than the language of the sun eclipsed by the 
earth, which we read in the allegorical complaint 
of Jonah, when swallowed by up the Coetus or 
fish of winter. I went down into the belly of 
Hell, — the Earth with her bars, was about me 
forever." 

The Devil was also named Abaddon in He- 
12 



200 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



brew and Apollyon in Greek. The first is a com- 
pound of Abba, father, and Don, the Lord; or 
Ab, father, Ad, the Lord, and On, the being, 
three names of God the Sun; the latter, the 
Greek name, " is the same as the Latin Apollo, 
the well-known and universal name of the sun. 
As in the medals of Nero, this god is represented 
crowned with laurels, having his quiver upon 
his shoulder, and the star of Phoebus by his side, 
with the Greek words, Apollon Soter, that is 
Apollo the Saviour." 

The serpent itself was imagined to be con- 
scious of all the sublime ideas which its physical 
characteristics typified; by a bold metaphor, 
it was wisdom itself personified. It was the 
Agatho-dcemon, or good serpent, encircling the 
mundane egg of the most ancient theology of 
Persia. It was, again, the serpent Ananda on 
whose mysterious folds the Creator of the World 
had slept upon the bosom of the ocean during 
the calpa, or period of 100,000 years of the 
Pouranas of India. 

In E[iggins , Anacalypsis is a representation 
of the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the 
waters, as copied from one of the ancient cruci- 
form temples in India. On a boundless waste 
of waters is a coil of nine huge serpents, in an 
elliptical form, their heads rising from one end 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



201 



of the coil and hanging over toward the centre, 
forming a canopy over the head of the sleeping- 
God. This Spirit of God thns moving upon the 
face of the waters, is represented by a jet black 
individual, extended at full length upon this 
serpent bed, who is sleeping, with a crown upon 
his head to denote his princely rank. The 
serpents were thus the seraphim on which God 
rode upon the chaotic watery waste. "It is from 
the phenomenon of the serpent shedding its skin 
that Job, who was an Ophite priest, and whose 
name itself signifies a serpent, deduced his hope 
of immortality in that sublime, but never under- 
stood apostrophe, 'I know that my Redeemer 
liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day 
upon the earth. And though, after my skin, 
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall 
I see God.' So the name of Eve, which Adam 
gave to his wife, 'because she was the mother 
of all living,' in the judgment of the most learned 
authorities, including the celebrated Bryant, as 
quoted by him in the judgment of Clemens 
Alexandrinus, signified a serpent ; so that if we 
had the true reading of the story of the fall, it 
might turn out that instead of its having been 
the Devil who tempted the woman, it was the 
woman who tempted the Devil, — an insinuation 
almost more than insinuated in that severe ob- 



202 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



jurgation wliicli Milton represents his Adam as 
addressing to her after her fall." 

" Out of my sight, thou serpent ! that name best 
Befits thee, with him leagued thysell as false 
And hateful : nothing wants but that thy shape, 
Like his, and color serpentine might show 
Thy inward fraud to warn all creatures from thee 
Henceforth, lest that too heavenly form pretended 
To hellish falsehood snare them. But for thee 
I had persisted happy, had not thy pride and 
Wandering vanity, when least was fit, 
Kejected my forewarning, and disdained 
Not to be trusted, longing to be seen ; 
Though by the Devil himself, him overweening 
To overreach. O, why did God 
Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven, 
With spirits masculine, create at last 
This novelty on earth, this fair defect 
Of nature ?" 

"The very earliest sect of christians was 
designated by the name of Ophites or Ophiani, 
on account of their paying divine honors to the 
serpent. In Egypt was a serpent named Ther- 
muthis, which was looked upon as sacred ; and 
that very name Thermuthis, Josephus tells us, 
was the name of Pharaoh's daughter, the foster- 
mother of Moses." 

Having shown in the preceding pages, as we 
think, the real meaning of the serpent as a 
symbol, we proceed to inquire what the thing 
symbolized as an adversary was; or in other 
words, who is the Devil ? The Devil has always 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



203 



been an object of fear just in the proportion tliat 
man has been ignorant and superstitious ; and 
be bas always sought while in tbe barbaric state 
to appease and bribe birn. We bave before re- 
marked tbat God or tbe good, was fruitfulness, 
warmth and life personified, and tbat bis grand 
emblem was the sun, which by metonymy be- 
came the serpent, who with his tail in his mouth 
represented the disc of the sun. To nations just 
emerging from barbarism, when agriculture was 
in its infancy, and the people had not the art or 
means to reserve large stores for a famine season, 
the question of food was the all absorbing one, 
and they naturally adopted the method of wor- 
shipping the powers of fertility, and as naturally 
deprecated the wrath of the antagonistic forces. 
In symbol writing, those animals that best rep- 
resented the warmth of summer became signs 
of good import, and vica versa. There were 
exceptions to this rule, in consequence of some 
peculiarity in the symbol; Cancer in summer 
and Capricornis in winter seem to be of this kind, 
but perhaps the goat being an amphibious mon- 
ster on the maps, or rather in the skies, repre- 
sents the wintry state, when there is a general 
commingling of earth and water. But fruitful 
virgins, twins, lambs, oxen, etc., were fit emblems 
of summer; while hunters, fishes, waterpots, etc., 



204 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



were indicative of winter. The serpent (for 
reasons given under the head of serpent symbol) 
became the symbol of both winter and summer. 
Consequently we find him in heaven, and in the 
bottomless pit. As the Dragon of the pole, he 
is the genius of winter ; as the Hydra, he is high 
up in the kingdom of heaven ; as a part of the 
constellation of the serpent-bearer, he is the 
giver of life, and as Scorpio he is the worm that 
never dies. In the form of a serpent, under the 
name of Python, we find the Devil first personi- 
fied in Egypt, overflowing the land, sweeping 
away their landmarks, cattle and habitations; 
next, when the flood was found to be a blessing 
in disguise, he is the personification of fever 
produced by the vapors arising from the mud 
and slime deposited by the Nile ; and again in 
lake Sirbon, amid the stagnant remains of the 
flood, filled with decaying vegetation, bitumen 
and sulphur, exposed to the thunderbolts of 
Apollo, he is consigned to a death that never dies. 

In this stygian lake in Egypt we have the 
origin of the burning lake, or hell, and in the 
adverse powers of winter originated the idea of 
a personal Devil. That he in his serpent form 
was an inhabitant of heaven, we have shown 
under the head of serpent worship ; his fall from 
that high estate is altogether astronomical. It 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



205 



has been shown that the serpent was once a part 
of the Jewish cherubim; see Jacob's blessing 
on Dan: "Dan is a serpent," etc. This serpent 
which fell from its high estate was, or rather is, 
the constellation of Scorpio, the Egyptian ser- 
pent. Scorpio has his domicil in October. To 
explain how that old serpent, the Devil, fell from 
his first estate and became the leader up of the 
hosts of hell, king of the scorpions, locusts, 
frogs, and all the signs of evil, it is necessary to 
digress from the main subject to explain what 
is termed by astronomers the precession of the 
equinoxes. It is known by all that the sun in 
winter is in the southern hemisphere, or south 
of the equinoctial line. It is known, too, that 
in his return to the northern hemisphere he 
crosses the line about the second day of March, 
sojourns in the northern heavens during six 
months, then recrosses the line again in the latter 
part of September. That part of the heavens 
above the points of crossing, or rather the con- 
stellations in which the sun appears to us to be 
during the warm months, including March and 
September, was called by all ancient religionists 
the kingdom of heaven; while the five cold 
mouths, or those below the equinoctial, were 
called Hades, Sheol, the pit, etc. It was the 
helJ of the ancients. The sun when it reaches 
12* 



206 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



its crossing point does not come to the equator 
at the same place at which it crossed the prece- 
ding year, but passes the line about one hundred 
rods from the spot at which it crossed before. 
It reaches the equator sooner each year, and 
consequently the vernal equinox passes through 
a sign of the zodiac in about 2140 years. From 
this we find that about 6000 years ago, the vernal 
equinox was in May, and the autumnal in No- 
vember. Thus with the astronomical eye we 
perceive the zodiac to be a ladder reaching to 
heaven, on which the angels of God are ascend- 
ing and descending. Since the first of May, 
6000 years ago, the cherub or ox of April, with 
his bright clusters of stars, has clambered up 
into heaven, and for two thousand years the calf 
of April was the leader up of the heavenly hosts, 
and then the lamb, who had been in adversity 
down on earth — which symbolically was the 
lower regions — followed the calf, ascended to 
heaven, and in his turn became the leader up of 
the heavenly hosts. In their turn the fishes of 
February should have followed and taken their 
place in the kingdom of heaven, and the Catho- 
lic Lent have been transformed into a season of 
rejoicing, but lo ! the modern astronomers, in 
league with the Devil no doubt, ordained that 
the sign should follow the equinox ; but to you 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



207 



that are not initiated the veil is over your hearts, 
and I spare you. If you would know what all 
this means you must join — the church ? no, you 
must join yourself to a common school atlas of 
the heavens, and then with the key that I tender 
you, the veil will be done away in this day of 
Christ's power, when men dare to think. The 
vernal equinox is now in the constellation of 
Pisces, or the fishes of February. But while the 
angels of God have been ascending to heaven 
along the ladder of the zodiac at the vernal 
equinox, what has been transpiring on the other 
side? what is taking place at the other gate of 
heaven? Why a stampede in the other direc- 
tion, most certainly! Jacob saw the angels of 
God ascending and descending. During the time 
that the gods of spring have been clambering 
into the celestial city, the gods of autumn have 
been falling; they have left their first estate, 
and now at the very point of time when the lamb 
of March comes up to the eastern gate of the 
New Jerusalem, Scorpio, that old Dragon which 
is the Devil, has slipt out of the western, and 
come down to the earth in great wrath ; has left 
his first estate, because by the precession, judg- 
ment was laid to the line and righteousness to 
the plummit, and he could not stand the ordeal ; 
but since that time he has been the leader up of 



208 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



the powers of darkness, is engaged in unceasing 
warfare against the lamb of spring and against 
his seed, for winter seems to have an especial 
spite against all the young of the lamb species. 
If the old system of astronomy or astro-theology, 
had been perpetuated, by the regular operation 
of natural law in the precession of the equinoxes, 
Satan, Apollyon, Baalzebub, Scorpio, would have 
regained his lost glory in about twelve thousand 
years from the period of his fall, by a repentance 
or change in his course at the winter solstice ; 
and from that time during a probationary period 
of about six thousand years, bringing forth fruits 
meet for repentance, he would have clambered 
up, entered in at the straight gate and taken his 
place where the Lamb is now firmly seated in 
his glory; but alas for Baalzebub, he had no 
sooner lost his first estate and become warmly 
engaged in the conflict with the lamb, and before 
he had enough of it to be heartily tired of the 
battle, the modern astronomers interfered and 
ordained that the sign should follow the equinox, 
and thus by a decree of science forbade the sal- 
vation of the astronomical Scorpio; just as this 
church has by an ^scientific decree ordained 
that Baalzebub shall continue the unequal con- 
test through unending ages, and that all who 
have enlisted under his banner through their 



THE HTEROPHANT. 



209 



grandfather Adam, unless they quit his regiment 
within a limited time and according to a pre- 
scribed method — even if they have never heard 
of the method — the same shall never have even 
a furlough, and never be permitted to quit the 
service of old Belial, be they ever so tired of the 
war. In the preceding remarks you have the 
whole enigma of the fallen angels unravelled for 
you. It is a part and parcel of that stupendous 
riddle, allegory, parable or astrological horo- 
scope of the Jewish or some other nation, yclept 
the Apocalypse, that has for so many ages tor- 
mented the commentators, and which none but 
the wise can understand. 



CHAPTEK IX. 



These astronomical phenomena were not the 
only causes, however, which were in operation 
to give the nations an idea that the spirit world 
was peopled by a race of fallen spirits. Having 
adopted the belief that the good who had died 
were located in the Eiysian fields, and the bad 
were shut up in the lower regions, to go no more 
out forever, they could not avoid the conclusion 
that all communications from the spirit world 
were superhuman, with the exception, perhaps, 
of the return of Samuel, Moses, Elias and Jesus, 
and some others. The pagans had their oracles ; 
the Jews had their wizards and witches, all of 
whom were believed to be on terms of intimacy 
with the daemons, and also were in the habit of 
disturbing the dead, as did the Witch of Endor. 
It was considered a great crime to encroach 
upon the holy rest of the dead, hence in Judea 
necromancy was punished with severe penalties. 
Among the Greeks, most splendid temples were 
erected to facilitate the intercourse with the 
Daemons, as they were called, both good and bad. 
In the works of Jamblicus (a Greek author), we 
have a statement of the reasons why many of 
210 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



211 



the communications from the spirit world were 
false. He affirms that if the inquirer rushes into 
the presence of the Dsemons without the prepa- 
rations of ablution, prayer, etc., he cannot expect 
truthful answers. The phenomenon of obsession 
by spirits was so universal in past ages that it 
formed a cardinal point of belief among all the 
religionists, including Christ and his earliest 
followers ; and only in proportion as the church 
has become semi-infidel, do they doubt spirit 
intercourse until the evidence becomes over- 
whelming, and then they adopt the old pagan 
notion that they are demoniacal, but all bad ; 
the word daemon in its modern acceptation only 
implying a wicked spirit. There is also another 
powerful reason why the different sects believe 
in a personal Devil. They cannot but admit — 
because their system requires it — that there has 
been great mismanagement in the affairs of this 
world somewhere, and they must needs have a 
powerful antagonist of God to foil him in his 
good intentions, and it is immensely advanta- 
geous to have some smaller fry on whom be- 
lievers can foist their own short comings. The 
modem notions in regard to the Devil and his 
rank and file, had its origin in the shades of 
paganism, and is perpetuated because the stand- 
ards of the church require it. 



212 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



Our intense ignorance on the subject of gov- 
ernment, also tends to perpetuate the idea of a 
fallen race, who like the vermin of Egypt swarm 
in horrid broods around us. The silly nurse or 
parent who is troubled with a diseased or other- 
wise troublesome child, must needs be furnished 
with the necessary implements of torture for 
mind or body, with which to assert and maintain 
dominion over the tiny subject. Foremost among 
the horrid forms that are made ghostlike, to 
dance before the little stranger, is the great bear 
that devours wicked children, or some horrid 
form is conjured up to fright the child into 
submission; and when that little one in some 
measure outgrows its childish fears, other modes 
of torture are invented to make cowards of us all. 
The great black bear of our childhood's dread is 
transformed into the angel of the bottomless pit, 
and he is ever represented as most eager to drag 
us downward to misery so horrid, that if the 
teachers of the doctrine of a fire and brimstone 
hell, with all the horrid paraphernalia of ortho- 
dox invention that rests eternally upon it, could 
for a moment believe what they teach, reason 
must reel and the darkness of idiotic despair 
settle down upon their miserable existence. 
When men cease to look upon God as a venge- 
ful being ; when we realize that God is love and 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



213 



we — the works of his hands, the children of his 
care — are safe amid the wreck of matter and the 
crash of worlds, the Devil will be allowed to die 
a natural death, and be buried in the same grave 
with the trappings of sectarian rule, amid the 
prolonged shout of the sons of humanity. 

The war in heaven, of which Milton has given 
us so graphic a description, is but part and parcel 
of this stupendous whole of ancient mythology. 
On one side were ranged the good angels, each 
having El in his name, the Hebrew name of the 
sun. On the other were the cohorts of hell, the 
leaders of which at least were known by On, 
the term applied to the sun by the Egyptians. 
Micha-El fought and his angels, and the Drag- 
On fought and his angels, said the inspired pen- 
man. John took for hk standpoint that view 
of the whole matter that symbolized winter and 
darkness by the term Egypt. John had about 
him all the proclivities of a Jew, and Egypt was 
synonymous with all that was dark, chaotic and 
villainous ; hence that passage in the Apocalypse 
" And their dead bodies shall lie in the streets 
of the great city, which spiritually is called 
Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was 
crucified." TVe therefore find that the names 
of the good angels were the names of the sum- 
mer signs of the zodiac, by their Hebrew names 



214 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



Micha-El, Abdi-El, Azra-El, etc., and the bad 
angels bore the Egyptic names of the winter, or 
signs of evil import, as Abad-On, Apolly-On, etc. 
The point of time chosen by the great Hiero- 
phant, or opener of the sacred inner temple to 
the initiated, was that age of the world succeed- 
ing the passage of Scorpio below the autumnal 
equinox. 

Belial, Lord of the opposite, is supposed to 
have his domicil in that sign that for the time 
being is opposite to the sign in which the sun 
happens to be. He is always in opposition. 
Baalzebub has his domicil in Scorpio. The 
battle represents the conflict between winter and 
summer. The great Drag-on of the pole, the 
region where eternal winter holds his carnival, 
was the proper leader of the forces of cold and 
darkness, while he had for his aids the Baals 
and the Ons of Ohaldea and Egypt. It was not 
until the lamb appeared — that is after months 
of fierce conflict, during which the battle raged 
and victory seemed to alternate, sometimes on 
the side of winter, until the sun ascending by 
slow degrees from winter, passes the equinox 
where he is crossified, and enters the constella- 
tion of the lamb, that victory finally perches on 
his banner, because the winter of our discontent 
is made glad, for the singing of birds has come, 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



215 



the voice of the turtle is heard in the land, and 
Belial, Baalzebub, Apollyon, and all the atten- 
dant Genii of winter are cast into outer dark- 
ness, are shut up in the darkness of the earth's 
shadow until the sun again enters Scorpio, and 
the Devil recommences the yearly battle. 

We come now to a brief exposition of the 
general scope of the Apocalypse. But in order 
more fully to comprehend its meaning, we need 
an insight into the sense of the mystical num- 
bers, seven and twelve : 

" The frequent repetition of the numbers seven 
and twelve, which run through and are held 
sacred in all the theologies, together with the 
numbers four and twenty-four, are among the 
many proofs that the visible machinery of temple 
worship was drawn from the planisphere or tab- 
lature of the heavens. The planetary system is 
evidently designated by the number seven, it 
being the number of the celestial bodies known 
as the primary planets, in which the uncreated 
light distributes itself, and in the centre of which 
shines the sun, its principal focus. 

" The ether which circulates through the whole 
universe was represented in the Pyreums of the 
sacred and perpetual fire kept up by the Magi, 
and each planet which contains a portion of it 
had its pyreus, or peculiar temple, where incense 



216 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



was burned in its honor. In the games of the 
circus, instituted in honor of the god of light, is 
manifested the religious genius of the Romans. 
The sun had its horses, which, in the hippo- 
drome, initiated the course of that orb in the 
heavens. The circus took place from east to 
west, till the seventh was accomplished, on 
account of the seven planets. The festivals 
celebrated by the ancient Sabeans, in honor of 
the planets, were held under the sign of their 
exaltation. The Persians formerly celebrated 
the entrance of the sun into each sign to the 
sound of music. The planets and seven sum- 
mer months are interchangeably reproduced 
throughout the worship of all antiquity. The 
chandelier with seven branches, in the temple 
at Jerusalem, and the seven enclosures of the 
temple; the seven gates of the cave of Mithra; 
the seven stories of the tower of Babylon ; the 
seven gates of the city of Thebes, each bearing 
the name of a planet ; the seven chords to the 
lyre; the seven archangels of the Chaldeans 
and of the Jews ; the seven days of the week of 
all people; the seven Sabbaths of seven years; 
the seven days of unleavened bread ; the seven 
Sacraments; the seven golden candlesticks; the 
seven spirits before the throne, which are said 
to be the seven horns and seven eyes of the 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



217 



lamb of the Apocalypse, and consequently that 
they represent the planetary system that receives 
its impulsion from Aries, or the lamb, the first 
of the signs, or the constellation which opens 
the march of the seven spheres. And it would 
seem that the whole of the starry heavens had 
assumed a body in the image of the gods ; towns 
were built under their inspection; they were 
invoked on entering the battle field, and the 
unfortunate victim was sacrificed on their altars. 
The ancient Egyptians led the sacred cow seven 
times around the temple in the winter solstice ; 
the Bonzes every year carry seven idols into 
seven different temples ; the Bramans had seven 
prophetic rings, on each of which was engraved 
the name of a planet; the Arabs gave to each 
star seven rays, and seven priests bearing seven 
trumpets, made of seven rams' horns, compassed 
the city of Jericho seven times for seven days, 
and on the seventh clay the massive walls came 
tumbling to the ground.'' 

The number seven sometimes means the seven 
planets of the ancients, sometimes the seven 
constellations of the kingdom of heaven, or those 
comprehended in the arch of summer resting 
upon the two equinoxes. The seven churches, 
and the seven golden candlesticks, represent 
the seven warm months. The seven spirits 
13 



218 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



before the throne of On, translated him> and the 
seven angels of the seven ehnrches are the 
seven planets, as are also the seven horns and 
seven eyes of the lamb that stood as it had been 
slain. (Rev. 5:6.) It requires a knowledge of 
the qualities belonging to each planet according 
to ancient starology, or astrology, to clearly 
discern in each case, in which the seven is 
brought into use, whether it represents the seven 
constellations or the planets. The seven seals, 
the seven trumpets, and the seven vials were 
probably various methods of stating the baneful 
effects of each of the planets upon the world 
under the most malign influence of the hosts of 
heaven. 

The number twelve was the most important 
of all mystical numbers. Twelve is admitted 
by all to be a perfect number. Why ? because 
the twelve signs of the zodiac comprehend the 
entire circle of the heavens. All the twelves of 
theology are simply various forms of represent- 
ing the twelve houses of the sun. Thus we 
have twelve patriarchs; twelve tribes; twelve 
apostles ; twelve foundations to the New Jeru- 
salem ; twelve gates ; twelve trees, whose leaves 
are for the healing of the nations ; twelve Baals ; 
twelve Ons ; twelve oxen, under the brazen laver 
in the temple ; twelve rivers in hell ; twelve 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



219 



mansions in the moon ; twelve shields of Mars ; 
twelve stones in Aaron's breastplate; twelve 
pillars in the temple of Heliopolis ; twelve altars 
of Janus; twelve labors of Hercules; twelve 
great gods ; twelve great angels in heaven ; 
twelve rays of the sun; twelve months of the 
year; and twelve signs of the zodiac. 

The seven churches were, correspondentially, 
the seven congregations of stars in the seven 
warm months in Asia, the land of fire, or the 
heat of summer. 

L Ephesus, the G-aelish name of the god 
Mars, whence our English name for March. 
This church Christ threatens that he will come 
and remove its candlestick out of its place. By 
the precession of the equinoxes this constella- 
tion, which 388 years before our christian era 
was the first of the churches, has been removed 
out of its place, and the vernal equinox, which 
was then in the first degree of Aries, is found at 
present to have left the second of the fishes. 

2. Thyutira, that is (I tread on frankincense) 
frankincense, being offered to the sun, when in 
the constellation of the bull of April. 

3. Philadelphia — brotherly love — the unequi- 
vocal characteristic of the two loving brothers, 
the twins of May. 

4. Pergamos — height, elevation, marriage of 



220 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



fire; the sun's highest point of elevation is 
in this constellation, which dwelleth where 
Satan's seat is. The hydra's head being, on the 
celestial globe, immediately under this church, 
Baalim's ass is in this constellation; hence 
Jesus says, " Thou hast in thee those that hold 
the doctrine of Baalim." 

5. Sar-dis, a wbrd formed of the Ammonian 
primitives sar, the rock, stone, or pillar; and 
Dis, God, afterward passing into the Coptic, or 
ancient Phoenician word El-eon, the sun, the 
being; and naturalized into the Greek, Latin, 
French and English word lion, that is the lion 
of July, who having been the lamb of the tribe 
of Gad or God of March, appears here as the 
lion of the tribe of Judah or July. 

6. Smyrna, a word signifying a bundle of 
myrrh, the offering made to the sun, in the 
virgin of August, having reference to the fra- 
grant flowers which she holds in her hand, and 
to the milk pail in the hand of the Isis- Omnia 
of Egypt; the Indian Isa, and the Grecian 
Ceres ; exemplifying that amorous compliment 
in the song of the loves of Christ and his church, 
" A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me." 

7. The seventh and last of the summer 
months, that is of the Asiatic churches, is Lao- 
dicea, the word signifying the just or righteous 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



221 



people, living, as you may see, in the scales of 
justice (Libra), the balance of September, when 
the weather is neither cold nor hot, but luke- 
warm; for which Christ threatens to spew it out 
of his mouth. 

And these seven churches — that is holy con- 
gregations ; that is constellations that are in 
Asia ; that is the land of fire, are included within- 
the two covenants: that is comings together; 
that is the two equinoctial points, when the sun, 
twice a year, in his oblique march in the ecliptic 
comes to the line of the equator, as he does in 
spring, about the twenty-fifth of March, and in 
autumn, about the twentieth of September, on 
what is or ought to be called Michaelmas day # 
And these two covenants are respectively the 
covenant of works, and the covenant of grace; 
because spring is the season for labor in culti- 
vating the earth, and autumn is the season for 
gathering in and enjoying the fruits of that 
labor. 

" The one,''' says the Apostle, "is front Mount 
Sinai, which gendercth to bondage, and answer- 
eth to Jerusalem, which now is, and is in bondage 
icith Iter children.'" That is,, the vernal equinox^ 
when that point was in Taurus the bull, was the 
time for putting the ox to the plough ; and during 
the reign both of that and the succeeding con- 



222 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



stellation of Gemini (her children), mankind are 
under the covenant of works, and there can be 
no cessation of the labors of husbandry. But 
the covenant of grace (favor), which is intro- 
duced by the fruitful mother of August, is Eleu- 
tliera, that is Liber, free — Bacchus, the covenant 
of enjoyment, when the full ripened grapes are 
to be put in the agony (or wine-press) in the 
garden, and to sweat out their precious blood, 
into the cup of the fierceness of the fury of the 
wrath of Almighty God, — and "all the ungodly 
shall drink it." 

The scope and limits of this volume will not 
allow me an extended analysis of the whole of 
the Apocalypse. Our object is merely to pre- 
sent the reader with the key to the mysteries 
of the Bible, and excite to inquiry. That part 
of Revelations from chapter sixth to eleventh 
inclusive, seems to be an attempt on the part of 
the author to represent the effect of the malign 
influence exerted upon the earth by the signs 
of evil import, or the gods of winter. The 
student of oriental literature can easily conceive 
how the prophet, having watched the starry 
hosts as they were marshalled upon the heavenly 
plains, and observed their various combinations; 
and under the inspirational influences of those 
angels, spirits or messengers who were in affinity 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



223 



with, hirn, in his astro-theological studies ; how 
he would or might be wrought up to a height 
of poetic fury, or inspiration, that could only 
find vent in the most high wrought language, 
and frightful imagery. He no doubt saw the 
sun, moon, planets, and wintry constellations, in 
such peculiar conjunctions and relations to each 
other, that according to the science of the age, 
they portended most horrid calamities to the 
Jewish nation, or as is now generally believed, 
to the whole earth. His figures are drawn from 
the planisphere, and mostly from the zodiac 
Thus in the ninth chapter, "A star fell from 
heaven; and to him was given the key of the 
bottomless pit." This star was, no doubt, Lu- 
cifer, Abaddon, Apollyon, Scorpio. This star 
(the constellation Scorpio) fell from heaven when 
it fell below the autumnal equinox ; for the five 
constellations below the equinoxes were in the 
bottomless pit. He opened the pit, and amid 
the smoke that arose locusts, that had power as 
the scorpions of earth, were permitted to torment 
men as scorpions torment when they strike a 
man, and this was to endure for five months. 

Here we observe that the power and the 
nature of the torment inflicted by the locusts, 
clearly point to Scorpio as the one who opened 
the pit, and the period that their power con- 
13* 



/ 



224 THE HIEROPHANT. 

tinned, viz : five months under the leadership 
of Abaddon, whose domicil was in Scorpio, con- 
clusively point out the reign of winter. The 
terrible imagery attendant upon these calamities 
was of the same frightful nature that was then 
most common in the teachings of the theolo- 
gians, in the various pagan nations to whom the 
Jews had so frequently been tributary. 

" The theology of the Persians and of the 
Magi, taught that the time marked for the des- 
tiny of man drew near ; a time when famine and 
pestilence would desolate the earth, and when 
Ahirman (their Devil), after many severe com- 
bats with the god of light, would be destroyed, 
and that then there would be a new people, and 
that a perfectly happy race would succeed this 
universal disorder. Such was the doctrine of 
the Magi. The universe was to be struck as 
with a flail. The time marked for the destiny 
of man determined and approaching. The astro- 
logical priest, to deter from crime, presented in 
advance the representations of these evils, and 
the heavens appeared to him to give those 
indices by their aspects, and by the prognostics 
which he drew from them. It was thus that 
Jacob read in such representations of heaven 
what would happen to his children and grand 
children. Great misfortunes were to happen ; 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



225 



the earth was to be struck a terrible blow ; and, 
according to the Toscans and the Jews, signs in 
the heavens and on earth should announce their 
approach. It is thus, then, that the enthusiastic 
high priest, after the inspection of the heavens 
concerning their signs and astrological aspects, 
composes his tables or makes his alarming rep- 
resentations." 

One of the most remarkable representations 
in the Apocalypse, is the woman clothed with 
the sun and the moon under her feet. By ob- 
serving a map of the heavens, we see in the 
virgin of August all the traits and peculiarities 
ascribed to this virgin clothed with the sun. 
The two wings, which we see in our modern 
planispheres, were mentioned in the astronomi 
cal works of antiquity, much earlier than the 
date assigned to the Apocalypse, She it is, that 
always. gave birth to the new sun or god of the 
ancients, just after midnight on each Christmas 
morn. She was thus clothed with the sun, while 
the moon was under her feet. As she rises at 
the time of the passover she is accompanied by 
Hydra, while the Dragon of the pole — symbol 
of winter — casts out of his mouth the waters of 
the equinoctial storm, as a flood after the woman, 
but the earth helped the woman, lor as she rises 
the river Eridanus sets in the west apparently 



226 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



swallowed up by the earth, for John says the 
earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the 
flood. This the earth actually does every spring, 
astronomically, by the setting of Eridanus, and 
also by absorbing the last of winter's rains. 
When the moderns become thoroughly initiated 
into astronomy, and understand judicial astrology 
as taught by the ancient Hierophants ; then, 
and probably not until then, can the whole of 
the Apocalypse be really understood. But we 
can even now, with our limited knowledge of the 
science, prove conclusively that astro-theology 
forms the groundwork of the whole book; that 
the warp and woof is intermingled, or the whole 
woven together according to the pattern to be 
seen in the heavens of the ancient astronomer. 
That the whole had reference to that immediate 
age, and the calamities that were to come upon 
the Jews during that generation, as predicted 
by Christ, I have not a shadow of a doubt, for 
John was shown things that must shortly come 
to pass, and the signs and calamities so coincide 
with those mentioned by Jesus, that they no 
doubt pointed to the same occurrences and the 
same period of time. 



CHAPTER XII. 



Before leaving the subject of Bible interpre- 
tation I wish to call the reader's attention to two 
or three more of the most remarkable occurrences 
recorded there. The sun and moon arrested in 
their course; Elijah's flight to heaven; and Jo- 
nah's adventurous sea voyage, have puzzled the 
modern theologians of every sect, and the gen- 
eral conclusion has been that we must believe 
in them literally, because God can do anything 
he pleases, and it is rank infidelity to doubt. 
While I candidly admit that some of the phrase- 
ology of Joshua makes it rather difficult to 
reconcile his miracle in all its parts with the 
astronomical mode, yet if we are allowed to 
accept a single comment that Gliddon makes in 
the Types of Mankind^ then all, and the only 
difficulties vanish. Gliddon says the phrase 
stcuid still is not according to the Hebrew sense. 
He renders the passage somewhat after this 
manner: "Abide thou sun in Gibcon, and thou, 
O moon, in the valley of Ajalon be most rcsjden- 
dantT I have before said that the twelve 
constellations were in the Egyptic called On; 
consequently, Gibe-on and Ajal-on were the 



4 



22.8 THE HIEROPHANT. 

names of two of the constellations, for where else 
could the sun and moon be, except in the con- 
stellations ? Supposing this battle took place 
at the full of the moon, we can easily imagine 
how Joshua, in the flush of victory, would or did 
give utterance to an exclamation that, coming 
as it did from their God-chosen leader, would be 
thought worthy of record, with all the flourish 
of trumpets so common in the oriental style of 
writing. And Joshua said, "Abide thou sun 
in Gribeon, and in Ajalon thou moon be most 
resplendent." And thus the moon continuing 
most resplendent in a country where the nights 
are peculiarly light and brilliant, when the moon 
is full, would give a day long enough, in all con- 
science, for Joshua's murderous purposes. The 
name of Elijah was composed of three mono- 
syllables, each of which was the name of Deity. 
El was the name of the sun in Hebrew, the same 
that Jesus called upon while on the cross, in that 
memorable passage, Eloi, Eloi, etc. Eloi is the 
possessive case of El. 1, was another name of 
Deity, when he is represented as the great I am. 
Jali or Yah, lah or Ah, simply meant the most 
high. Elijah's name, then, was the one sun, most 
liigh. He represented the sun passing up to the 
summer solstice. The sun was El at Christmas, 
Eli at the equinox, and Elijah at the summer 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



229 



solstice; lie then became El-i-sha. In tlie case 
of Eli's sons, who wrought folly in Israel, the 
snn was Eli until three days before Christmas 
he fell backwards and died, and gave place three 
days after to his successor. Elijah is repre- 
sented as going to heaven in a chariot of fire. 
This figure is in strict accordance with the an- 
cient representations of the sun. The sun had 
his chariot, his fiery steeds and his charioteer. 

Hercules, who was the sun, ended his eventful 
life by ascending to heaven amid the flames of 
his funereal pyre. In Guido's celebrated paint- 
ing of the chariot of the sun, he represents 
Phcebus, the charioteer, as a young man with 
flowing hair. Hair represented the sun's rays, 
and were emblems of strength; thus after Elijah 
ascended, his mantle fell upon El-i-slia, a bald- 
headed man, i. e. the sun having passed the 
summer solstice, from that period began to lose 
his heat or strength. Elijah, then, was the 
summer sun, and Elisha the autumnal. There 
is another slight touch of riddle-making in the 
case of the children and the two bears. The 
children were the twins of May, and the two 
bears were the two bears of the pole. If any 
object that there were many children, we answer 
that in all these ancient parables great license 
was allowed and practiced, the outside gloss or 



230 



THE HIEROPHAM 1 . 



garments were purposely exaggerated in order 
more effectually to hide the real sense. 

Jonah's history was another riddle, and can 
only be solved by plowing with the astronomical 
heifer. His name too, like Elijah's, consisted of 
three of the names of the sun, viz : J, the one ; 
On, the being; and JEs, the fire. His name in 
Greek, is, like the name John, spelled I-aon-es. 
Jonah's riddle supposes the summer sun issuing 
his mandates to the autumnal sun, directing him 
to preach repentance to Ninevah. In ancient 
teachings there were distinct suns as there is, 
indeed, with the moderns. It is quite a common 
mode of expression to say a July sun, an Au- 
gust sun, etc. Jonah is represented as fleeing 
from the summer sun, and we find him soon 
among the storms of winter, until he finally is 
swallowed up by the great sea monster, where 
he cries to God from the belly of hell ; and truly 
enough the winter solstice finds him down, down, 
in the great deep among the fishes, and in the 
lowest department of the bottomless pit of the 
ancients. And he is not only among the fishes 
but he is compelled to lie still during the 
three days that end on Christmas morn, exactly 
in the bowels of the water goat, and in close 
proximity to the constellation of the great whale, 
the largest in the heavens. Here we see, or may 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



231 



see, the reason why modern divines cannot tell 
what kind of a fish it was that swalloAved Jonah. 
It is because the veil is over their face, in the 
reading of Moses, to this day. 

The fasts and feasts of the christian church 
coincide in regard to time, and celebrate the 
same event that the pagans celebrated in their 
ceremonies. The Romanists and Episcopalians 
adhere more pertinaciously to, and retain more 
of the pagan holy days than do the other sects. 
One reason is that they are more learned in 
ancient religious literature, and are fully aware 
that they are only the offspring of the ancient 
pagan church, and on this is founded their only 
righteous claim to a great antiquity. 

The ancients celebrated the birth of the new 
sun, or new year, on Christmas, and at early 
morn the Hierophant, or priest, exhibited a babe 
in his cradle to the multitude to denote that their 
Saviour, the new year's sun was born. So do 
the Catholics and Episcopalians celebrate the 
Christinas, while the other sects wait seven days 

and then celebrate the same event. Twelve 
days after Christinas the ancients had their 
Epiphany (Ej;i-j)hanes, from Phancs, the Persian 
name of the sun), for on that day it was manifest 
to the naked eye that the sun had commenced 
his journey toward the northern hemisphere. 



232 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



At the vernal equinox the pagans held the 
great, or one of the greatest, jubilees of the year. 
The passover at this period, and the feast of 
tabernacles, immediately after the autumnal 
equinox, or as it was called by the pagans, the 
feast of Bacchus, being the two grand feasts of 
all the ancient pagan nations, as they also were 
of the Hebrews. The classification of the sun 
at the passover was the sign of salvation from 
starvation ; at this precise juncture the sun was 
supposed to escape entirely from the power of 
the Devil, and commence his reign in glory. 

For ages prior to the invention of letters, the 
Phallim, or organs of generation, had become 
a most important, because a most significant, 
hieroglyph or symbol of salvation. Therefore 
as the Saltier or St. Andrew's cross, forming an 
angle of twenty-three degrees, i. e. the angle of 
the ecliptic or the angle formed by the sun in 
crossing the line, became an emblem of salva- 
tion, because it ushered in the fruitful season ; 
and the lingam also being an emblem of fecun- 
dity, they necessarily became in some measure 
blended into one idea, and, as I have before 
remarked, in consequence of the grossness of the 
phallim symbol, it gave place to the serpent and 
the Roman cross, both of which symbolize the 
principle of fecundity, without shocking our 



THE HIEROPHAXT. 



233 



modesty with the grossness of their form. Ac- 
cording to ancient theological and astronomical 
science, therefore, men were saved by the two 
forces, viz : the warmth produced by the sun as 
he is erossified or crucified at the passover, and 
the generative power of the appropriate organs 
in vegetable and animal life. 

From these ideas originated the practice of 
carving the organs of generation upon the an- 
cient pagan temples, while the moderns have 
perpetuated, the same ideas, in the less repulsive 
forms of the serpent, the Saltier and the Roman 
crosses. In this view of the matter at issue, as 
the precise period of the birth and death of Jesus 
is unknown, how appropriate for the believers 
in the atonement to fix his birth on Christmas, 
the day in which all the pagan gods were born ; 
and his death at the precise period when the 
Jewish Iamb, or the Egyptian calf, was crucified 
on or in the cross of the vernal equinox. The 
celebrated fast of Lent, and also the fast of 
Ramazan of the Mahometans, likewise based 
upon the same system as the others, has been 
thrown out of its proper place by the precession 
of the equinoxes, or by some other probably now 
unknown cause. The fast itself celebrates the 
passage of the sun from the constellation Aqua- 
rius, which is flesh, through the sign of the 



234 



THE HIEROPHANT. 



fishes, the proper food for the faithful, until it 
enters the constellation of the lamb ; the same 
being a period of forty days. Instead, however, 
of commencing at the proper time, the fast has 
become a moveable one, and is dependent upon 
the phases of the moon of the equinox. The 
assumption of the virgin takes place on the 
fifteenth of August, the precise period at which 
the sun has reached the centre of the virgin of 
August, and assumed her — that is absorbed the 
light of her stars, and swallowed her up in the 
glory of the sun, the heaven of the ancients. 

The nativity takes place, as you will see by 
a reference to the Catholic books, on the sixth 
day of September, at the precise period when 
the sun, having entered Libra, passes below the 
great toe of the same virgin, and then her earthly 
career commences, she being born of the sun — 
that is proceeding from him, emerging from his 
rays ; hence, the sun being God, the virgin is 
his offspring, consequently divine ; and therefore 
it is most certainly proper and right for the pope 
to decree, as he lately has, that the virgin is 
immaculate, spotless, pure, does not belong to a 
fallen race, and is not of us, as the virgin of the 
pope most assuredly does not, being the child 
of the sun. g 4 



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